
Insane Comics 2016
Written & Lettered by Dave Scacchi
Illustrated by Gary Welsh
It’s been several years since mankind witnessed the strange lights on the Moon. After sending several probes, images sent back from the Lunar surface revealed enormous spires of unknown origins scattered across the landscape; structures that were not there during the Apollo missions. Astronauts sent to investigate soon discovered the Moon is not a natural planetary body--but, a hollow alien superstructure designed as a “cage” containing a controllable wormhole. In the name of exploration, brave scientists are sent through. This is their story…..
This is another book from Insane that demonstrates why you need to pay attention to this company. I like that we have the intro to let us know what’s going on and that we open up with a team heading into an unknown atmosphere and being completely unprepared. It’s very much the opposite of most alien invasion stories as humans are the ones going to another world in a science fiction adventure.
This issue is nicely done as we get to meet the characters and get an understanding of the inhabitants of this strange world. With very much an Earth type atmosphere with a very different species rising up to dominance. So the crew crash lands on this planet and they are seen as the invaders and are treated as such upon the ones finding their ship. I think that’s appropriate all things considered and it’s what we’d do on Earth if the same thing occurred.
So first contact kind of goes the way you’d expect and that’s at least one freaking out about meeting the alien species they came to discover. The remaining scientists then are taken hostage, well let’s face it we’d do the same thing so the parallels here are nicely done. The writing and characterization of these characters is very well done. Also that we cannot understand what this species is saying is all the better as we have to rely upon the actions we see on the page.
Gary does a very nice job on the interiors and the creativity he shows in these aliens to make them both familiar, menacing and a surprising rise to intelligent dominance is clearly represented. Personally I see two major influences in them but i’ll wait to see more before I decide as we’ve only this scouting party so far. The way he uses the pages and panels to show the flow of the story is nicely done. His use of backgrounds is excellent and helps give the reader a greater scope of feeling of the characters surroundings. Also I really like the black, white and gray tones as it has this old school movie feel to it.
Trapped on an alien planet with cut off communication wise from home and seemingly no help coming what is the crew of the Rubicon supposed to do and how are they going to get out this? With a few surprises up his sleeve still Dave manages to start off this series generating a plausible science fiction tale that grabs the reader’s attention. This is a keeper for those who love to watch old black and white science fiction tales and for those who like the modern day versions as well.