Well this is my first time reading something by Brian Haberlin, as I am unfamiliar with his previous work, Spawn. Being both a story creator and artist, I would have to say that he seems like an all-around guy whose general focus is on outer-space. Is it good?
Faster Than Light #1 (Image Comics)
Issue starts off in an interview with Saul Fredricks, a guy who created a formula for faster than light travel. This means that we can now visit any planet we want in the time it takes to finish this sentence. To be technical, it’s about 186,282.4 miles per second (no, I’m not some nerd that knows that out of nowhere. It’s called Wikipedia), so I guess it would take a few minutes. This idea isn’t really original; we’ve seen it multiple times, first that comes to mind is Star Trek. There are a few references from there as well, so it’s probably trying to steal a few people from their ginormous fanbase.
This issue is not really focused on the plot at hand as we only know that these astronauts are exploring new areas to find allies for aid against giant machine-like aliens. We see lots of new characters popping up and interacting with one another. What starts off as light banter between two men about what to call themselves when they encounter aliens…ends up in technical jargon and distrust within the new crew.
The dialogue is pretty realistic in terms of place, time, and chain of command, so that I can applaud, though at times I found it dull. The characters are very diverse. There’s definitely no offense to race or sex. I thought that the fact that the previous commander was a woman was awesome, because you don’t see that too often. I think that newer comics coming out have been focusing on branching out to other readers (female and the like).
The artwork is one of my main issues as it’s more on the realistic side. It’s hard to grasp the characters’ expressions and some of them even look too alike to really know who is who. I think that the spaceships and the backgrounds are absolutely beautiful, but everything else was just loads of ‘meh’. Especially when you introduce a million characters all at once and all of them have similar faces.
Is It Good?
I think that there is room for growth in this series because we haven’t got to the meat of the story just yet. Hopefully, when we encounter some aliens and action, I can forgive some of the flaws.
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