Don't get too excited: this pair of Mad Max motion comics have nothing to do with the long-developing new George Miller film Mad Max: Fury Road. They are instead the set-up for the videogame, announced at E3 this year and headed to a console near you from Avalanche Studios. But hey, new Mad Max is new Mad Max, and this is our first chance to get our heads round the jarring notion that the hapless Mr Rockatansky no longer looks like Mel Gibson. Here, he doesn't look like Tom Hardy either. So we still have that to look forward to.
The gist: after a spot of road warrioring, Max runs out of petrol at an inconvenient moment and has to face a gang of deranged wasteland punks on foot. All seems lost, but then, strangely, seems not to have gone so badly after all.
Watching all this is new character Chumbucket, who looks akin to the hunchback Ephialtes in 300 and who seems to have developed his own religion based on the combustion engine (so shades of Beneath The Planet Of The Apes' bomb worshippers there too). He's decided that Max is the chosen one that's going to help him build a machine called the Magnum Opus. Is he right? Watch the clips and find out.
Not much is known about this game so far, aside from its unsurprising emphasis on vehicular combat and customisation. The plot seems to have Max on a search to get his famous Interceptor back. How big a role Chumbucket and his Magnum Opus play remains to be seen. The writer of the motion comic is Tom Taylor (Dark Horse, DC, IDW), and the art comes courtesy of Jason Shawn Alexander (Dark Horse).
Fury Road, meanwhile, stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron with, last we heard, Nicholas Hoult, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz and Rosie Huntington-Whitely. IMDb also lists original Toecutter Hugh Keays-Byrn, so let's hope that's not just wishful thinking. Film and game are both due sometime in 2014.