2 out of 5

I know, not fair to rate this since I didn’t read issue #1.  I’ll admit: I only bought it ’cause Michel Fiffe drew some pages.  But… seriously… one book in on a new series and I can’t even get a sense of what the fuck is going on…?

We are… tracking the Captain… through different era, maybe?  In what we’ll consider the present, his ship-mates are looking for him, but maybe he’s actually somewheres kicking ass on a trash-heap of a planet?  And then he has some flashbacks to his first days as a ranger… or maybe also when he was a kid?  I don’t know.  I’m either not smart enough or not cool enough.  But it took me two weeks to get through this one issue because there wasn’t anything that made me want to read it.

So let’s look at the art.  Nathan Fox handles everything except for (what I’m interpreting as) the early Ranger days.  His style has a detailed sweep that’s similar and stylization that’s similar to James Stokoe, but much, much looser…. and much more difficult to discern what’s what in certain panels.  When action ignites, I’m seriously struggling to figure out who’s punching and who’s being punched.

As far as Fiffe’s bit goes, they’re some good looking panels with definite Kirby nods, but unfortunately nothing that he hasn’t surpassed in his own ‘Copra.’  And I guess I was expecting to see him on more pages – he got 5.  Looking at the preview for the next book, I’m guessing this is an ongoing thing, to have a “guest” artist fill in a past flashback, but I feel like it would be more effective (and, like, readable) if that section of the book truly felt like a separate event, instead of just one choppy flashback / setting out of several.

Again, take it all with a grain of salt since I had absolutely zip knowledge of this title before this book, but I’m honestly quite shocked by the learning curve.