The only way to get away from a badly ended relationship is to go to another planet.
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Horton
Art: Stephen Thompson
Colors: Lisa Jackson
What They Say:
A lone human survived the death of the one she loved, and escaped a corrupt Earth. She now makes her way as a bounty hunter, on a satellite full of aliens. But someone’s about to turn her life upside down…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Science fiction is both the hardest and the easiest thing to do in comics. It’s easy because there are so many areas you can go that the sky’s the limit falls short in really capturing what you can accomplish. It’s also hard because you really, really, need a vision in order to make something strong that stands out against the field at large. Science fiction is still few and far between on the comic racks, though it’s been growing well the last few years, and it’s now joined by Satellite Falling, which comes from writer Steve Horton, illustrator Stephen Thompson and colorist Lisa Jackson. Presenting a new world, or worlds, is a daunting task but one that has a lot of payoff on the creative side because you’re unbound.
With Satellite Falling, the team has certainly put together an interesting book as we’re introduced to our lead of Lilly, a woman who has left Earth to come to a place called Satellite where she’s working as a taxi driver. That’s just her cover though as she’s really working as a bounty hunter that uses holographic technology to mask who she is so she can take down the most wanted types that end up in her flying cab. For Lilly, this is all a distraction that she needs to try and stop thinking about the death of her significant other three years prior as she can’t help but to think of her, almost like a ghost sitting in the seat next to her still. Through the narration it’s made fairly clear that there’s a solid love there, though it’s more of a spoken and not shown thing owed to the nature of an opening issue. Horton covers a good bit of basic setup in this book with these areas and moves it forward to showcase what Lilly is like.
What the book does from there is move into an actual mission that continues into the next issue, though it’s not something that feels like it’s setting up something big, at least not yet. But what it does do is showcase how Lilly interacts with local law enforcement, which apparently doesn’t have any problems with its “chief” picking up Lilly in a pretty aggressive way, and working some fun gender non-conformity elements into it as well. The fun of alien races is being able to open it up so that anything is possible and you then have to work through the social/psychological elements of it. It’s in this area that Thompson gets to have a lot of fun. The book is well laid out and I like the subdued color tone that Jackson uses, since they could go garish if they wanted, but it’s in the alien design that you can see a lot of potential from Thompson with it. There’s some good variety here to that combined with some gadget trickery that makes for an enjoyable romp.
In Summary:
Satellite Falling doesn’t do a lot of heavy lifting in establishing the makeup of this particular place, or humanity’s connection to it, but it has some neat little bits to it. I like that we get a world where Lilly is the only human and that she went there to get away from everything that would remind her of her loss. Throwing yourself into your work is common for a lot of people in these situations and I’ve been there myself, just not with the bounty hunting. Steve Horton has set up things well with pretty much an open field of possibilities and Stephen Thompson and Lisa Jackson look like they’re definitely going to bring it to life well with him. It’s definitely a solid debut for a new book that should entice the science fiction fans with something that has the right balance of humor and action with just a little bit more to it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: IDW Publishing
Release Date: May 11th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
