Written by
Brian Azzarello
Art by
Eduardo Risso
100 Bullets wasn’t one of the
first comics I read, but I still consider it the gateway. Before then, most of what I read was either
superheroes or licensed. Being thrown
into that series was something different altogether, and even with its flaws,
it left me with the highest regard for the creative team of Azzarello and
Risso. Their return to Vertigo with
Spaceman got me very excited, and it sadly does not live up to my expectations.
Orson
was one of the Spacemen, a group of brothers who were genetically created
specifically to go to Mars. Now he’s a
collector of junk on Earth, in a future that’s gone to hell. When the adopted daughter of a
Brangelina-style reality show couple gets kidnapped, he ends up finding her and
gets mixed up in a huge plot as everybody tries to get her.
Which
leads to one of the main flaws: there’s simply too much going on in this book. Whereas 100 Bullets had the problem of a
story that didn’t quite last for 100 issues, Spaceman has a story that needed a
few more issues. There are a lot of
characters and a lot of plotlines in a mere 9 issues. There’s Orson’s journey with the girl, Tara,
then his brother shows up also looking for her, and there’s flashbacks to their
time on Mars, and there’s also two detectives, and on and on. It’s too many characters, and none are
developed enough. I barely know anybody
by the end, and some of the plot points were just lost on me.
Although
that also comes from the dialogue itself.
There was a lot done with colloquial language in 100 Bullets, and it
worked for the most part in identifying the characters and their backgrounds. Spaceman creates its own future dialogue,
which ends up as a mix of text speak and its own creations. Some of the ideas in it are neat, like
thinking and hearing being replaced with braining and earing. Some of it just ends up making it
unreadable. It got to a point where I
had a sigh of relief any time a character appeared that was speaking in normal
English, even if it was only for a sentence.
After you’ve read pages of stuff like “Soree bout the no before, but the
geepee satee in the sky”, anything comprehendible is nice.
My
big praise for the book is how well the world is built. It’s the best kind of satirical dystopian
future world. Everyone is connected to
the net, and reality shows have basically become a 24/7 thing. The constant focus on what will make good
programming, whether it’s accurate or not, is shown a lot. At one point, a police raid is planned out
for what will get the best camera angles.
And it’s all complemented by Risso’s art, building the city into a
terrible flooded wasteland. The many characters
are also instantly recognizable. His art
also comprises the only extra, a few sketches and some pencils. There are no notes or anything, which seems
to be stretching the definition of “deluxe edition”.
Spaceman
is a disappointment. A strong concept
lost thanks to its last of focus and a terrible dialogue choice. A few simple decisions end up being the
difference between gold and pain.
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