Tie-ins — comics created as an adjunct to a video game or a movie — are typically for fans only. One such example: The King of Fighters 2003: The Comic is absolutely and unabashedly for the fans of the game — a vehicle for SNK’s characters where they can use the thinnest possible excuse for a story to justify having them smash each other through walls, into parked cars, and (as in the climax of the fight at the start of the book) bury them under a landslide, all in splashy full-color. If this sounds like fun — trust me, you don’t need this review; you’ve probably already got $14 burning a hole in your pocket as I speak.

Everyone else, however, doesn’t need to rush out and blow that kind of dough. Right from the start it’s clear you’re in fan-only territory: the plot summary at the start of the book doesn’t explain much of anything to the uninitiated. With even less preamble we’re thrown into a showdown in the wilderness between two key characters in the game’s mythology: Kyo Kusanagi and K’ (read: “K-prime” or "K-Dash"), a fighter infused with Kyo’s genetic material to grant him many of the other man’s powers. The brawl ends with K’ burying his opponent under half a mountain and walking away, but Kusanagi doesn’t stay dead. In steps the priestess Chizuru Kagura, who brings Kusanagi back from the dead as a puppet under her control … and out step the two of them for the rest of the volume, presumably to return in a future installment.