Sea Of Stars #1 - Image Comics

SEA OF STARS No. 1, July 2019

Whilst Jason Aaron and Dennis Hallum’s collaborative script for Issue One of “Sea Of Stars” is debatably far from being “as boring as hell… with a capital Boo”, this twenty-eight page “Rated T” periodical’s narrative would almost certainly seem to contain one of the most dislikeable leading cast characters imaginable in the guise of eight year-old Kadyn Starx. True, it is well to remember that Gil’s “young son” is actually still only an infant, absolutely chock to the brim full of the impulsive impatience readers will associate with the adolescent, and emotionally bereft following the death of his mother to boot. But that doesn’t debatably stop the boy’s persistent plaintive whining from very quickly aggravating the senses as the child bitterly cries about how his “recently widowed” father won’t fly “past black holes and supernovae” just because the ageing, fun-less, space trucker thinks they’re “a really great way to die horribly.”

Disappointingly, this increasingly irritating opening sequence isn’t particularly brief either, due to the comic’s writing partnership utilising it to demonstrate what a reasonably-minded, doting single-parent the Intergalactic Parcel Service’s courier is, despite his ungrateful offspring ultimately attempting to emotionally blackmail him by bitterly stating that “Momma woulda let me” see Quarksharks. To make matters worse, the little brat then disobeys his father to wander the Porkchop Comet’s storage section and insolently meddle in the artefacts of the Krogarrian Museum of Space History despite being warned that “it’s all really old. And really expensive.”

Surprisingly, it is only at this point, when attention firmly focuses upon the veteran “star duck” and his realisation as to just how dangerous the “something huge on the long-range scanners” really is that “Lost In The Wild Heavens” provides a sense-shattering sequence of some magnitude, and almost literally grabs its audience by the throat in a similar manner to that of the storyline’s “gigantic Space Leviathan!” With the man’s big rig lying in tatters within the mighty monster’s enormous maw, and Kadyn already sucked out into deep space, the pulse-pounding pace of this book’s penmanship really comes to the fore and doubtless a fair few bibliophiles will find themselves as breathless as the human postman is by the scene’s end.

Sadly though, despite Stephen Green’s best pencilling efforts, this publication’s conclusion comes as a massive anti-climax after all the aforementioned high octane action, with the utterly bizarre premise that the adventure's overly-argumentative kid has somehow been saved from being eaten alive and a distinct lack of oxygen by “a talking Space Monkey riding a Space Dolphin…” Head-scratching and wholly contrived, this whacky revelation is made all the more stupid by the boy being able to both understand and communicate with the extra-terrestrial wanderers, as well as swim in outer space like a fish; “This is a miracle we’re witnessing right now. I mean, look at this strange little man-person.”

The regular cover art of "SEA OF STARS" No. 1 by Stephen Green