Hesitation In Space
Hmmm.... This was definitely worth $1. I'm only a recent fan of Azzarello, my first exposure was his Flashpoint: Batman miniseries which I LOVED, and I'm loving his run on Wonder Woman, but that's it. The covers for this series are AWESOME, and Eduardo Risso's artwork was excellent on Flashpoint: Batman, and for some reason none of my LCS's received the new American Vampire this week, so I had some extra cash. I'd been meaning to look into this, and now I had the moment when one of the slightly further comic shops I rarely visit still has surprisingly far back stuff still out on the shelves not as back issues.
Buuuuut.... I don't know. I think I'm going to give this another issue or two, but I'm not sure I'm on board.
The cover is awesome. The balance of Risso's interior art to Johnson's covers is an interesting one. But frankly, the bottom line is that this cover is just GUSHING with artistic beauty. It's so interesting on a bunch of levels. The sketchy depiction of Spaceman, the subtle split face, the rocket coming out of his eye but also straight up through the middle of the image.... It's just so excellent.
And Risso's interior art is as unique and cool as it always is. It's got lots of shadows, and it's all atmospheric and whatever. If you've ever seen Eduardo Risso's artwork then you know what I mean.
There's some interesting aspects to the story, all the stuff in Spaceman's dreams/flashbacks are painting a compelling picture of a backstory, and the plot it appears he's getting mixed up in seems intriguing too.
But there's this huge middle section that I barely understood. It was just chock full of.... slang? Or maybe just a whole degeneration of language in the future? I might understand the point, but it's a PAIN in the ASS to read. And it took a bit to really discern the connection to the rest of the story. There was a conversation between four people who all had a equally miserable grasp of the english language. It was almost headache inducing, and such a relief to move away from that scene.
I do have to note that I also appreciated the 'rougher' actual paper pages instead of the sleek shiny paper dominating most comics these days.
In Conclusion: 3/5
It's not.... TOTALLY bad, but it's not really what I had expected from Azzarello. Risso's art is one of the biggest saving graces, and the beginning and ending show signs of an interesting plotline, but the middle section is supposed to be the meat of the character, and it was a pain to read. It seemed like it was crafting a future akin to Transmetropolitan, but Trans-Met REALLY helped you comprehend everything, this future seems to be fighting you, making you work to understand the crazy future here.
