Magnetic Press/Lion Forge 2018
Written by Lewis Trondheim & Zep
Illustrated by Dominique Bertail
Translation by Jeremy Melloul
Agent Yoko Keren is trapped in space outside the Infinity 8 interstellar cruise ship, which itself is trapped in a massive debris field full of alien corpses—a graveyard in space! All of the ship's airlocks are sealed shut by a mob of rogue Kornaliens who've gone into a drunken craze after feasting on the space mummies and have now turned their guns on the ships reactor core . . . dead passengers mean more corpses to eat! Can Agent Keren stop them before it's too late?
This really just keeps getting better and better and I am going to be sad when this creative team’s run is over. 24 issues 3 issue arc rotation and this is going to be unlike anything, and I do mean ANYTHING you’ve yet to encounter. what’s the catch simple each arc centres on different viewpoints of what is happening so the characters don’t leave but how we see things does. Oh and have I mentioned lately how much I believe that you need more European comics in your life lately!
I love that this guy ate the dead Buddha so now he’s got that whole zen like state going on where he thinks he’s in love with Keren. First of all that was one hell of a great way to demonstrate what these beings are, what they do and the effect of what they eat has on them. Plus Yoko Keren, Agent to you and me, is solidly focused on her mission so much so that she’s not able to help the ship while the rest of the Kornalien’s ate some dead King and are attacking it.
I am such a fan of how this whole book is structured. Between the dialogue and the way we see actions happen here this story is able to come to life extremely well. From finding this kind of space graveyard to having the Kornalien’s turn into some sort of flesh hungry monsters, well it is in their nature but this is extreme, and Keren out there exploring what’s in their way it all just has this great feel to it. Keren finds herself in a situation where thanks to her trusting nature she is also on a race against time to save her own life!
I am in love with the interiors here! They are fabulous and the fact that Dominique fills each panel with alien spacecrafts or dead bodies or asteroids he really manages to not only create this gorgeous and haunting backdrop for this to be in but he also expands it and shows the scope of space in ways I've never seen done before. The work is spectacular and the attention to detail in the backgrounds really show some stellar talent with it’s attention to detail. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off his eye for storytelling which is pretty amazing. The creativity and imagination on display here is just superb and everything we see is what adds to the story with it’s subtlety and it’s overt nature of the work.
There really isn’t a single thing NOT to love about this. It has a pin-up quality heroine running through space being chased by an alien (to her) species where we get to see these marvellous backgrounds, laser blast and chunks of dead people and space maggots. This knows how to be serious without taking itself seriously and how often can you find a balance like that, which doesn’t need a net to catch it to boot!
Fun, quirky, innovative and damn near everything I want when I get lost in a story!