A complicated world to grow into.
Creative Staff:
Story: Rob Blackie, Peter Blackie
Art: Daniel Maine
Colors: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
On the far side of the galaxy, an isolated branch of humanity is trapped in a feudal dystopia. Order is maintained by a system of oppression until an orphaned girl and her incorrigible adoptive father sow the seeds of a revolution and unite the clans against a fearsome alien threat.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the best things about new books is often that I get to see new creatives that I haven’t seen before. The writers for this, Rob and Peter Blackie, both come from the Netflix series Frontier and have crafted something complex here to work with and spend the opening installment working the foundations. For it, they’re paired with Daniel Maine, who has worked largely at a publisher that I don’t follow personally but has produced some great-looking stuff. Here, he gets to tackle a lot of big picture stuff but put a human face on it with the cast and deal with the situations as it unfolds. The problem for both is that it feels like the opening segment of a video game explaining how things work in the world.
With a larger multi-system setup that looks like it covers a lot of territory, we learn that everyone has a place within the structure of this feudal interplanetary design and that it’s done through clans. Our introduction to this is through Gummy, a frigate pilot who is about to be bumped down to loader when his ship is fired upon while transporting human cargo. Only he and a little girl named Te’a survived the event and while he’s reluctant at first, he ends up taking her on with a bribe so that she’s believed to be related to him. This lets him keep her close so he can take care of her after the death of her family and others in the crash. The downside is that he got bumped down a good bit from pilot to loader and now spends the next eight years eking out an existence so she can have a childhood until she becomes of age.
And that’s where the bulk of the book focuses, on the sudden reveal to her that she now has to work. It’s no surprise that at twelve or thirteen, she doesn’t like being told that she’s basically locked into something because this is what the clans have decided. It’s all very superficial in what we’re told here but Gummy lays out the structure in a big picture kind of way but we also see through one encounter how he’s running something behind the scenes while trying to keep her on the straight and narrow. We see just how much trouble she can get in as well with all of this as she strays a bit but it’s only his quick thinking that helps again. We see a lot of how the foundations of this system is setup and that it’s clearly not working for some people, but there’s a sense of inevitability about it that keeps people moving forward through it.
In Summary:
I can see where the team is going with this and it feels like what we’re getting here is essentially the opening scrawl of a series or big-budget film to explain the structure of things. It’s clear enough but not populated enough for us to really connect it well as it mostly focuses on just on our two leads and a handful of other characters. I do like the premise and the way there’s strict controls here which makes me curious to see how they intend to break things going forward. But it’s mostly just operating in a kind of clunky way to set the foundations here as quickly as possible but without it being a full infodump. Maine handles this well in showing off a lot of different places so we understand the expensive size of the clans overall and that definitely helps.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: July 7th, 2021
MSRP: $4.99
