It took nearly eight years, but the new Team Fortress 2 comic Valve promised back in July is finally here. Entitled “The Days Have Worn Away,” issue 7 is a free digital comic that tells a sprawling tale of history, redemption, and the very special magic of Smissmas.
Valve said it’s “very, very relieved” to finally have this next chapter of the Team Fortress 2 comic finished, but pointed out that it could be worse.
“Did you know the construction of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was one hundred and ninety nine years late?” Valve wrote. “Literally everyone alive when construction started was dead by the time it finished. So unless you’re having this read to you from the bad side of a Ouija board, you made it out the other end of issue seven’s historically-speaking-pretty-short seven year delay alive. Which isn’t too bad.”
I won’t spoil any of it for you, but suffice to say that there is a lot going on in this one, and some genuine surprises including what I’m pretty sure is our very first look at one of the team members unmasked. It gets dark in places, unexpectedly emotional, and very strange, but finishes on an appropriately festive high note. I don’t think it’s revealing too much to say the Soldier takes center stage in this tale, though and, and in a very nice touch it’s dedicated to Rick May, the voice of the Soldier, who died in 2020 at age 79 after contracting Covid-19.
As PC Gamer’s Rich Stanton pointed out when word of the new comic first appeared, the previous issue in the series, “The Naked and the Dead,” arrived on January 10, 2017. That’s just a month shy of eight years, and yes, Valve Time is real, but even so hopes that this story would ever continue had grown faint over the years. It’s not all that surprising, then, that the release of the next issue has been greeted with something akin to rapturous joy:
It sounds like this is the end: Valve writer Erik Wolpaw shared an image on X of “the last TF comics meeting ever.”
If this really is the end, I’d call it a very strong finish indeed. But you’ll have to read it to discover why: You can do that at teamfortress.com.