This month, for fans of Philip Dick and Harlan Ellison, comes a new monthly title from hard-boiled Vertigo veterans Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets, Jonny Double). The opening issue of Spaceman begins its nine-month run for its first year. It creates a rich dystopian world that necessitates exploration, and introduces a flawed, more-than-less-than-human protagonist as a cog from a machine that never got a chance to work.
The style is a delight. Azzarello brings his unique command of dialogue to the newspeak of the Internet age. Almost uncomfortable to read at parts, the language makes it frighteningly easy to imagine the influence of another decade spent amongst unintelligible Facebook walls and Twitter feeds seeping further into our already compromised vernacular. The book, as a whole, presents us with a jaded, but not unrealistic, conception of where our future may lie. It showcases innocence abandoned to the ignorant, an environment suffering from overindulgence, and, overall, a disparaging loneliness in its main character, created and abandoned before fulfilling his destiny.
Vertigo has always been a fantastic space for Azzarello to do his thing. This hasn't changed. Readers familiar with him will recognize his panache, as well as Risso's, though the elements presented in the story are a departure from Azzarello's work on Bullets. Yes, the story dances about as close as one can to an Ellison plot without stepping on its feet, but, if anything, that's one more reason to pick up this book. Also, to create interest in the series, Vertigo has priced this first issue at $1.00. So if Azzarello and Risso teaming up again isn't enough to entice the casual reader, it's certainly nice for the price.
Support Evil Squirrel Comics
