By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Eduardo Risso (art), Trish Mulvihill, Clem Robins (letters), Mark Doyle & Will Dennis (editors), Dave Johnson (cover)
The Story: Our titular spaceman get’s tangled up in a kidnapping plot while having semi-explanatory flashbacks to the past.
Five Things:
1. Story is starting to round into shape. – Last issue spent most of its time establishing the basic atmosphere of this semi-dystopian, quasi-post-apocalyptic future world. Here we start to really get into the meat of the story as Orson, our central “spaceman”, stumbles upon a little girl who has been kidnapped while picking for junk out on the open ocean. It looks like there’ll be a bit of an odd-couple vibe: Hulking spaceman who is a societal outcast protecting little girl (who will doubtless be kind to him because children aren’t burdened with society’s baggage). But, this issue will make any 100 Bullets fan feel right at home as the whole fight on the ocean is gritty and grimy: dude laying there with his guts handing out, talking all tough, gunplay, violence, slang language…. It’s like sci-fi 100 Bullets.
2. Still a LOT we don’t know. – Although this issue starts to tease things, we still don’t know what really happened to the world to make it this way. The creators give just the right amount of teasing to keep us interested in that part of the plot. You know how it is: When the creators keep ending scenes one panel too soon? If they’d just keep the scene going for one panel longer we’d understand everything? Sometimes that can be frustrating, but these guys are doing it very well.
3. Love Risso’s art! – Honestly, a LOT of the attraction to this series is the art of Eduardo Risso. It isn’t just the drawing, but the overall sense of graphic design that pervades the issue. He always seems to pick a wonderful angle to illustrate a scene from and Risso is also a master of directing the reader’s eyes across the page in the order he chooses. A fun thing I like to do with a Risso comic is use your hands to cover up parts of a panel, but leave the “main” part alone. It’s really cool how you still get the idea behind the story that way, but it makes you appreciate how well he constructed the panel to make it a richer experience.
4. Great cover by Dave Johnson. – I think I’m turning over a new leaf on covers. I used to never talk about them in reviews, but they deserve more attention because it is the “face” of the comic. All comics should have someone like Dave Johnson doing the covers. It’s just refreshing to see a cover that isn’t a standard pin-up of Batman doing something random with no relation to the interior contents. Here we see our spaceman (rendered in a kinda art decoy way), bravely planting a pirate flag (or is it the symbol for poison) on a barren landscape. It could be a publicity image that was intended for after the spacemen went to Mars, but it could also be the spacemen making their mark on this dystopian world.
5. Very much a glamour project. – This is the kind of series that Azzarello and Risso can pitch, get it accepted by Vertigo and ordered by retailers and readers. A new creative team would probably have zero luck pushing the same material. By that I mean….this is a slow series to develop. Most retailers and readers are going to stick with it because it is Azzarello and Risso and Vertigo has faith that those folks will keep buying even if it is a slow burn. If you looked at this series in a vacuum (i.e. without the expectations that come from 100 Bullets or that Batman Flashpoint series), a lot of folks might think that the action is a little slow to develop comic.
Conclusion: It’s a slow burn, but it still rides high on the reputations of the creators. If this was a couple of new guys, I probably wouldn’t have faith that it would turn out so well, but since it is Azzarello and Risso, I’m in for the whole 9 issues and they can take their time. It’s got a lot of things going for it: weird future, mysterious protagonist, violence, great art…
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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