I am a fan of comics from continental Europe as they tend to have more explicit sci-fi story lines than the American ones that concentrate on superheroes (a massive generalisation, I know). The major difficulty is finding English translations of these books. Perversely, the best source of such material is the American magazine Heavy Metal. Twenty years ago I was a regular buyer of this magazine but it got dropped when I took a hiatus from collecting and reading comics. I decided to pick up a copy this week when I was in the comic shop.
The quality of any particular issue lies in how good the features graphic novel happens to be. In this issue it is a story called Biocosmosis: Savas. This is the second book in a series, the first was reprinted in Heavy Metal in the March 2009 issue, and it suffers because of that. There is not enough background to the characters and their affiliations to make enough sense of the back story and the main story, concerning a rampaging horde of creatures attacking the abandoned survivors of a planetary war, is not interesting enough to make up for this.
I’ll certainly try and remember to look out for future issues of Heavy Metal but will probably do some more research on the main story to see if it is likely to appeal to me before I buy.
No comments:
Post a Comment