Each time that I see the iconic Star Wars scrolling text I realize what a huge fan of Science Fiction I am. Fortunately comic books have always delved into this genre. Even when superhero comics fell out of favour in the 50’s, SciFi was still readily found on the spinner racks. Image Comics, through Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint has dipped into the SciFi pool again and released Horizon #1.
“Earth invades another planet”. That’s what the writer and creator of Horizon said on the “letters page” at the end of the book. Told with an interesting narrative style and through flashbacks we find that Zhia Malen from the planet Valius comes to an Earth slightly in the future to prevent the impending invasion of her homeworld. During her arrival her translator was damaged so the book starts off with gibberish in the various speech balloons. Again, this dialog concept and sparse textual cues really makes for an interesting flow to the story. You start off just as disorientated and confused as someone that has crash landed on Earth would feel. You learn more and more as each page progresses. You get the sense that Zhia has seen all of Earth’s worst possible traits even before it is explained in the letters page.
Juan Gedeon’s art is such a compliment to the story telling style. Equally as sparse but still very well done the art definitely fits with the Sci Fi theme. The colouring by Frank Martin enhances the line work and basically does exactly what good colouring is supposed to do. There is a neat text gimmick where Valian speech is in square dialog boxes and English is in round boxes which actually works well.
If you are a fan of Image’s Saga and Descender or Chapter House’s The Fourth Planet you will definitely want to pick up a copy of Horizon #1. The $2.99 introductory price is an added bonus as well.
Issue: Horizon #1 | Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Brandon Thomas | Artist: Juan Gedeon
Price: $2.99
About Author
