4 out of 5

Ignore the back cover references to retrofuturism and Lovecraft. Try to ignore any press about the book. I admittedly sampled the first couple pages online before buying, which I do think is good just to clue you in of the Mature rating, but otherwise… just soak up the cover to this graphic novel. Soak up the subtly pulped font; the askew but classic sci-fi whizbang technologies of the spaceship; the menacing chillax of the lead character, half-smiling while slumped and smoking. Oh, he’s holding a gun, so casually. Oh, there’s an axe, stuck in the wrecked machinery. Take in the cocked angle of the camera; the red-soaked color; the ship’s portal, displaying a Mars-proxy planetoid. The cover tells you everything you need to know.

There’d been some chatter in 2025 (time of this book’s release) about a need for sci-fi horror in comics, and that it was successfully filled by the Event Horizon miniseries. …Sure. But everything that that book does with what, to me, is a clunkily heavy hand, Giovanni Barbieri and Gianluca Pagliarani’s The Shadow Planet not only accomplishes in less pages, but with much more skill and impact: the characters feel more real (at least relative to their world); the stakes feel more palpable – while being more otherworldly at the same time! – and it manages to give us requisite action and gore as well.

The plot, at a high level, mimics the same paranoia vibes Event Horizon pulls from: the ship Vidar (part of the lovably vague “Star Command”) receives a distress call from E/Rico, a ship which has been missing for 30 years. They’re tasked to planet Gliese to check it out, and given a ticking clock before they need to rendezvous with their fleet and return home. An E/Rico survivor and a death are a prelude to further discoveries about the lost ship’s crew’s history; strange, arcane dreams hint at more to find on the planet itself.

As soon as some details are in place, you’re familiar with the basic shape of the story; however, Barbieri takes some clever diversions either around or straight into that shape that re-mold it into something fresh and exciting. Characters act logically within the bounds of the narrative, and Pagliarani – with an expertly balanced palette from Alan D’Amico that juggles old pulp vibes with the macabre – has a way of depicting “old school” science fiction in a kind of timeless fashion, such that it does not feel anachronistic for the cast to be wearing bubble spacesuits while spouting swear words and banging each other. That said, while the erotic is part of the B-movie smear over the book’s lens, there’s an aspect of it in a dream sequence that felt like it was reaching for something not necessarily sold by the rest of the “lore;” extending from that, while I loved the novel’s brevity, I would’ve also taken some further explorations of this lore, or dialed it fully back to the glimpses shown around this scene.

A little more on the visuals: the bulk of the book’s content is amazing. The creature and sci-fi designs end up doing something new with concepts we’ve kinda seen before, and although there’s a digital touch to the character models, I liked the stiffness it brought, adding to the otherworldliness of the overall feel. Design-wise – I’m not actually seeing anyone credited – some things feel off. The back cover is a bit too pop, comic sans-y; the negative image frontispiece feels like something from a Scott Morse book – just a totally different tone. But the book is put together (and printed) well.

The extras are also weird: I love that there are extras – sketches, pinups, thumbnails – but the lobby card concept again feels out of place. It’s like a gag for a book that skews more humorous, matching with that back cover.

If these sound like especially narrow criticisms, that’s because they are; The Shadow Planet is an amazing read. You know where it’s going, but it manages to be a thrill ride anyway, and makes for an experience where you want to pause on and soak up every page.