When you’re born for a purpose, never achieving it can leave you feeling very out of place.
What They Say:
The hulking, lonely loser Orson spends his days collecting scrap metal and dreaming of the startrekking life he was promised. But when he finds himself at the center of a celebrity child kidnapping case, he sees a chance to be a hero–but will his actions only cause more heartbreak?
The Review:
While I unfortunately have not had the pleasure to read the series 100 Bullets by this creative team, I did get to sample their work a bit this past summer with the Flashpoint series Batman: Knight of Vengeance, which was one of my favorite of the miniseries out there for what it did. So combining that with what they’ve worked with on the past and the praise there, I was keen about Spaceman just from the cover artwork alone, as well as the price of just a buck for the first issue. As the saying goes, I’ll buy that for a dollar and I’ll sample pretty much any comic book series for that price as well. And with Eduardo Risso’s artwork, it’s easily worth the price of admission and almost just for the cover itself to be honest. Something about it just really captured my attention and I really wanted to get into a Vertigo book since they’re going the same-day digital route for various titles.
The series is the type that doesn’t just lay it all out with exposition and an info dump, but the basics that we get here is that the lead character is Orson, someone who has an almost monkey look about him who was essentially designed for the sole purpose of survival on Mars in order to help get mankind out into space. It’s unclear whether he really made it or not based on the first few pages, but presumably it was just a training exercise and he never did. What happened instead is that the world did completely turn to shit and he ended up not being able to fulfill his purpose. Instead, he’s just eking out some kind of existence amid the ruins which introduces us to the fractured style of speech that they have and the others that sort of exist here.
There’s a background plot going on involving a kidnapping that comes into play, but it’s not given a huge focus and in a way just adds a confusing layer to things as we see a different side of the world. And that’s on top of an already confusing book if only for the manner of speech most of the characters have. There’s something hugely appealing about the look of the book, especially digitally as the colors just have a really beautiful vibrancy and depth about them, but it’s one that can be pretty divisive about what it means to you. Azzzarello definitely has someplace he’s going with this, but the opening issue is more just a taste of the overall idea without much in the way a clear cut vision.
Digital Notes:
This comiXology edition of Spaceman comes with the main cover as released with the print edition and no other extras.
In Summary:
Spaceman has a lot going for it and at a buck for the first issue (subsequent issues will be $2.99), it’s definitely worth checking out to see if it’s going to work for you. I got into the visuals of the book, from the character designs to the panel layouts as well as the gorgeous coloring used, but the narrative itself wasn’t exactly a struggle, but it the more it progressed the more it pushed me away. It’s the kind of book that you really want to like but ended up not clicking at all and almost became a chore since it felt so disconnected from things. There’s a lot to like for fans of this creative team, but with it being something that they’ve said is definitely different from what they’ve done before, it could certainly be more of a challenge than they expect.
Grade: C
Readers Rating: [ratings]
