An intriguing title that pulls from both the past and future.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Sable
Art: Alberto Locatelli
Colors: Juancho!
Letterer: Rob Steen
What They Say:
Point Nemo – the farthest oceanic point on earth from any landmass. A spacecraft graveyard where rockets and satellites can be safely ditched on the ocean floor. In a near future ravaged by climate change, an African astronaut teams with an Indian shipping magnate to mount a dangerous salvage mission to recover the wreck of humanity’s first interstellar starship. But what they find is beyond their worst nightmares.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This new series comes from Mark Sable, whose work on Miskatonic I was intrigued by even if I struggled with it at times, and artist Albert Locatelli who get to deal with something futuristic and problematic. I liked how Sable handles his characters but it takes a bit to introduce them and get them to a point where I feel like it comes together, so I expect it to take a couple of issues. Locatelli’s artwork is pretty solid from the outset here but the book suffers from jumping to places quickly and there not being a smooth way to transition it all because so many things are happening. Mostly, it suffers from the same problem that a lot of first issues do in trying to get enough in there to hook the reader but doing it at a pace and design that almost makes it muddled.
The premise for this is interesting in that it takes place in 2075 and starts as a spaceship named Daedelus has arrived at a far-flung star system some six light-years away. Mankind is about to get its first response back on it but at the time that it happens, it seems like that ship crash lands in the place where starships die at the south pole. Basically, where the large junk is crashed and is sometimes dealt with, such as the Mir. It’s really unclear that it’s the Daedelus that has come crashing back but it makes the most sense, as confirmed by Kiara Katri, a woman who is the fourth great-granddaughter of Captain Nemo and runs the Nemo project. She’s come to collect Captain Sam Dlameni, a South African who worked for SANSA but was passed over for the mission itself. He’s not exactly keen on this chase that Katri is talking about but there are interesting bits there about how those in the southern hemisphere are overlooked and she has a plan.
Mainly, she’s made her money scrapping ships of all kinds for years and knows that the Daedelus is there and that its power source, if they can get to it before the other fleets from the northern hemisphere, they can lay claim to it and use it to power a huge portion of their part of the world which is seeing the worst effects of the climate disaster. What we end up with is Sam on board for this quickly and then once close to where things went down learns of the true origins of Katri. And that has her talking about how there’s a vessel down there from 250 years ago – with a Confederate flag on it – and a very preserved being inside that’s not… dead? Suffice to say, a lot of things are thrown at the reader here quickly and it’s like a whiplash effect.
In Summary:
I can see the promise of this title easily just in the initial setup and idea and then to have everything thrown for a loop later on with Katri’s ancestry. I’m curious to see where it’ll go because Sable has a knack for blending interesting things together like this but it takes a bit to find its rhythm, especially after an intro that needs to load up a lot of things in favor of time to build and introduce characters. Locatelli’s artwork is definitely solid throughout and I really like what we get as they get the ship underway to the south pole and we see what they discover there. It’s just that there’s a ton going on that doesn’t make for smoother transitions in scenes and the period of time, which makes for an awkward read at times.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: June 8th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99
