4 out of 5

Chuck Austen trades in tropes. It’s good to know, and to “accept” in your exploration of the writer’s works. I’m a long time defender of Chuck’s; even of his most maligned stuff. I know it’s partially shaped by him having hit his Marvel peak right when I was rediscovering comics as an adult – meaning I started reading X-Men right during his run – but even when I go back to those issues, armed with a lot more comics history, I can’t claim it’s solely nostalgia that softens me up to a lot of it, and that allows me to enjoy it.

There are other avenues of conversation there, specific to how Chuck wrote for Marvel versus his indie / creator-owned fare, and how he writes women, but bearing in mind that tropeyness is a good guide: if you’re good with stomaching some cheese and soap in Austen’s stories, or set your brain to existing in that kind of high-drama environment, his writing – to me – can prove to be wildly impactful: deep characters, rich storylines, and concepts that work on a surface level (Edgeworld: Western space cops) but allow for little tendrils that dig into deeper meanings as well.

Edgeworld is, mostly, that three word pitch I just provided: on a planet called Pala, aliens of different homes gather in a frontier town that happens to look like the Earth’s Old West: saloons, cowboy hats, brothels. Our lead, Killian, is our grizzled Bruce Willis / Clint Eastwood type: bearded, thousand-yard stare, and always ready with a quip in his position as magistrate. This setup then gets blended with the 2000 AD judge / jury / executioner setup – Killian has the option of putting down criminals permanently – but, more narrowly, that of Lawless: Killian has to report into a higher authority, and they’re not necessarily aligned with the way he runs things.

A larger framing has a Palan looking back from some unspecified present upon Pala’s past, and experiencing Killian’s life through a type of shamanic ritual; Chuck uses this to jump around in the timeline, which allows Edgeworld’s five collected issues to cover quite a bit of ground, though mostly boiling down to two mini-arcs: dealing with some killer sandstorms on the planet, and a very Lawless-like conspiracy with some killer bugs.

That comparison shouldn’t distract from this being Austen’s (and artist Patrick Olliffe’s) own creation, however. The aforementioned tropes guide the structure and some cringey dialogue, but again, if you’re able to get onto that level – and please, all those Marvel and DC comics writers that are generally praised are guilty of the same cringe – there are so many small narrative and visual details that begin to differentiate Edgeworld from the space Western subgenre, and allow Chuck to get our sympathies for characters that only appear for an issue or two before meeting their fate. The framing narrative helps with this, skirting around plot armor for Killian (and Cheela, the young Palan he soon ends up in charge of) and overlaying a sense of hopelessness in a way – we’re observing things from a point in time when the story is way in the past, and arguably doesn’t matter – which nicely counters the high drama of the contents.

On the art front, I’ve always appreciated Olliffe as reliable, and he brings that consistency here as well, but given the opportunity to design from the ground up, I adore the balance he’s given this world, flirting with just enough steampunk to make Edgeworld feel functional, and then also dotting in more typical sci-fi outfits and spacecraft – often via the authority figures who rule above Killian, visually adding to the class structure kicking around in the story’s background – fleshing out the way Palan has become a melting pot. As with Austen’s writing, the characters also start from trope (our sheriff; the upstart kid; the cranky doctor) but get filled out with their acting, subtle tics giving weight to pauses and looks.

I think Lee Loughridge’s generally dim palette of blues and browns makes sense, but, as with Jodi Wynne’s very formal lettering, there’s something overly digital about both of these aspects that makes me wonder if the book being digital first – it was a Comixology original, then printed by Dark Horse affected those choices. The print form does add in an appreciably honest foreword from Austen, and lots of great character sketches from Olliffe.