Space Bastards Vol. 2 // Review
Originating as a crowdfunded indie project, Eric Peterson and Joe Aubrey's Space Bastards has been picked up as a regular series by Humanoids (the Paris-born publisher best-known as the company responsible for the Metal Hurlant anthology.) The crowdfunded series continues in 2021 with Volume 2. The legal-sized (8.5 x 14 inches) dystopian hardcover graphic novel delivers another four stories set in a world of progressive capitalism that's so ugly and cutthroat that life itself is incredibly cheap. Peterson and Aubrey expand the cast of characters while adding some complexity to the world of the bastards. The artists keep the action respectably explosive for the entirety of the second volume.
Tough-as-nails misanthropes deliver packages in a dark space fantasy future. The main serial is Tooth and Mail. It's not going well for all of the Bastards. Towering, psychotically aggressive Manicorn is forced to a day off. (He'd...had a bad day.) He's not taking the forced time off well. He's missing a major delivery as Resurrection Mary has fallen into possession of a very important package: a man who needs to be delivered to a medical facility. Mary serves as the main character of the second story set three years before the events of the rest of the book. No one knows her yet. They find out about her in a hurry. The biggest departure from the central world involves a captain of a ship delivering a group of non-military scientists into a particularly dark corner of space.
Peterson and Aubrey expand things in a way that feels quite natural for what is essentially a sequel to the first volume. If this is a dark future galaxy where human life is trivial next to the pursuit of money through package delivery...then what happens when people themselves become their own kind of cargo? It's a fun extension of the initial premise that spills in around the edges of a hell of a lot of action. The deeper implications of the fiction slouch around the edges of a violent space fantasy world that still feels fun as it reaches its second big graphic novel.
Space Bastards Co-Creator Darick Robertson continues to provide a stable signature style for the artwork that carries over from Volume One with fast-paced action visuals that are tempered by a degree of drama. Colin Macneil lends clean lines and an aggressive pulse to the standalone story featuring Resurrection Mary. The impressive depth of Clint Langley's work on the story of the scientists punches-up the visual appeal of a drama that might otherwise have been the weakest story in the book.
The book's overall impact continues to have its own unique appeal, from the weird door-like legal-sized aspect ratio of the pages to the fact that those pages are printed on high-quality poster stock. It's a very classy package for action-based comic book adventures. Even the weakest stuff in the volume feels powerful given the print quality of the book. Individual issues of the Space Bastards series are available at comic shops courtesy of Humanoids. The Volume 2 Hardcover is available for backers of the series on Kickstarter.
