Titan Comics 2017
Written by Joe Haldeman
Illustrated by Marvano
With Gay Haldeman
Lettered by Cat Connery
Still reeling from the massacre on Aleph, the survivors are speeding across space, pursued by a Tauran cruiser. Mandella, shaken but not driven insane by the events he witnessed on the planet, is still pondering the machinations of an army that would choose to embed such terrifying conditioning in its soldiers.But his time among the stars is coming to an end. If he can just make it to the Stargate, his tour will be over and he can return to life as a civilian on Earth... at least, that’s what he hopes.
I’m not gonna lie i’m a sucker for a good science fiction story. At first as I started reading this series I thought perhaps it was going to go along the lines of Starship Troopers, the whole fighting an alien race kind of thing. More so since we really didn’t see the enemy we just heard about them and how awful they were and how they needed to be dealt with. Though in all reality that did sound an awful lot like propoganda and a way to go to war for a myriad of reasons. So the economic and sociopolitical sides aside the story started off in somewhat familiar territory with a decidedly different slant.
Then we get to this issue and suddenly things take a turn you won’t see coming. Suddenly it’s more like the realistic side of Buck Rogers returning to Earth and the consequences of him being old, out of touch and beyond the norms of the new society. I mean it’s like this whole thing took this route into a black hole through a nebula and emerged into this whole new hyper reality where the things we fight for today, equal rights (lgbt among them) for example are encouraged and not swept under the rug. It’s a topsy turvy world this crew and Mandella doesn’t quite know how to react or how to even belong anymore.
The interior artwork here is so gosh darn good. I am such a fan of the attention to detail that we see in each panel on each page. The way page layouts are used and the angles, perspective and even the backgrounds really make this stand out the way it needs to. The whole spaceship, science fiction aspect of it blended with the military is done to perfection. From the linework to the colouring everything hits on just the right cylinders and makes for some absolutely classic feeling science fiction.
That this is not only an interesting read but a far more intelligent one than I was expecting is among the plethora of reasons I think this is utterly amazing. Also people please take note while i’ve not read the book i’ve a sneaky suspicion that this is literally how you translate a novel into comic form. It has that feel of a story story one that has a lot of depth to it. There’s just something large about how the story feels as we’re reading it. Then along with the twists and turns that we are taken on already and we’ve still got a few issues to go this takes on the kind of scope that novels are famous for.
Titan is home to some of the best series that come from other forms of entertainment.