Welcome to the latest installment of Preview Reviews.
This week we have a two really good books for you. The first is Fear of a Red Planet #1 from AfterShock Comics, and the second is Once Upon a Time at the End of the World #1 which is from Boom! Studios.
You can find these books at your LCS or wherever you buy books on November 23, 2022.
Also the rest of the #NewNumberOnes for November are here.
Fear of a Red Planet #1
AfterShock Comics
Written by Mark Sable
Art by Andrea Olimpieri
Colors by Olimpieri
Letters by Dave Sharpe
Cover Art by Paul Azaceta
Original Solicitation:
Mars. Fifty years from now, humanity’s first Martian colony is no longer self-sustaining. Under the thumb of its corporate mining overlords, the surviving colonists slave away just to pay for resupply rockets from Earth, will little or no hope of returning home.
One woman has kept a fragile peace: the U.N.’s first and only interplanetary marshal. A lawwoman escaping a violent past on Earth, she prides herself on never having fired a shot on Mars. But when she’s tasked with solving the murder of the colony’s most hated man, her investigation threatens to tear the red planet apart.
Written by Mark Sable and illustrated by Andrea Olimpieri, FEAR OF A RED PLANET is a near-future western with the hard sci-fi of The Expanse and the hard-boiled gunslinging of Justified.
PCS Review:
Society often has unrealistically advanced expectations about future technology, and those expectations have been affected by science fiction. It is much more likely that advancements in the near future will be extentions of current techonology attempting to meet the demands of new settings. That is the world that Mark Sable exposes the reader to, albeit a different planet, in Fear of a Red Planet.
The first issue serves to introduce what the future looks like fifty years from now and how humans will go about making a colony/enterprise on Mars. It is much closer to an “Old West” frontier story with space suits than something like Star Trek TNG.
Andrea Olimpieri renders the future Mars environment beautifully, and his style serves to add to the cobbled together frontier asthetic to the book. The borderless panel technique used in used in the book works incredibly well with the color highlight aspects. Dave Sharpe’s dialogue lettering and SFX designs are excellent compliments to the story.
There are a bunch of threads revealed in this first issue and a whopper of cliffhanger at the end. We definitely want to see where this story is going.
Once Upon a Time at the End of the World #1
Boom! Studios
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Alexandre Tefenkgi & Nick Dragotta
Colors by Lee Loughridge & Rico Renzi
Letters by AndWorld Design
Cover Art by Mike Del Mundo
Original Solicitation:
In this epic post-apocalyptic tale, Maceo and Mezzy have never met anyone like each other, and they’ll need all the help they can get to survive a planet ravaged by environmental catastrophe.
This epic trilogy-each issue overflowing with 30 story pages-spans a lifetime as philosophical differences tear at the threads holding Maceo and Mezzy together.
Will they, and the earth beneath their feet, ultimately be torn apart? New York Times bestselling, Eisner and Harvey Award-winning, and Marvel flagship writer Jason Aaron launches his most ambitious creator-owned series to date with the first of three unique artistic partners – Eisner-winning artist Alexandre Tefenkgi – to take on a vision of the end of the world that’s brutal and nostalgic, whimsical and grounded… and ultimately, timeless
PCS Review:
I don’t know what to say about this book. Listen. We have all read books or seen films that take place after some environmental catastrophe. There are certain themes that they follow. I will say that this book is set as the title states “at the end of the world”. I don’t want to say too much because I want people to read this book.
This feels like the beginning of an epic story. The art by Tefenkgi and Loughridge is gorgeous and brutal. The visual narrative leads the reader through the story at an energetic pace. This is one of those books that you read twice, because you are so caught up in it the first time you want to go back and make sure you didn’t miss anything.
I have been anticipating this new creator owned book from Jason Aaron. I am not disappointed. Do yourself a favor and get on this book early.
