Saturday Splash Page #210

"The Black Sun Group," in Roche Limit #2, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta and Kyle Charles (artists), Jordan Boyd (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer)

On the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy sits an anomaly. Like a black hole in that it swallows light and energy, but without the intense gravity. Around it sits a dwarf planet, Dispater. On and within Dispater, a colony, Roche Limit. The dream of the son of a billionaire, the colony was failing before Moiratech and its 3 founders stepped in, with a vision of finding new resources beneath the surface. That vision has failed as well, and the colony is now a backwater land of criminals and addicts, in thrall to a drug made with the only unique mineral found on Dispater, a drug known as Recall. And it's into this that a cop from Earth arrives, looking for her sister, Bekkah.

Roche Limit was an odd book for me in a particular way. Up to then, certainly in the lifespan of this blog, the titles I bought were in some sense known quantities. The majority being from Marvel and DC obviously. Even the selections from other publishers were mostly things I knew previously from TV (the Buffyverse stuff, Boom's Darkwing Duck title), movies (the various Rocketeer mini-series), video games (all the Bloodrayne stuff.) Of the rest, I knew GrimJack from my cousin's collection of the original series well before the Ostrander and Truman did Killer Instinct or Manx Cat. Atomic Robo and Empowered had both been praised by multiple comics bloggers I read for years before I got around to try either.

Roche Limit? It was its own thing, not a continuation or extension of any pre-existing concept. I didn't know any of the creative team by prior work. The book being titled after an astronomical concept I was familiar with happened to catch my eye, and that, seemingly, was enough to take a chance. Which means this mini-series is, in some way, the start of all the oddball stuff I've bought from various other publishers over the last dozen years.

As to the mini-series itself, Moreci has things several threads that cross or combine at different points. Sonya, an Earth cop who spends all her savings and most of her pension to buy a ticket to come find her sister. She runs into Alex Ford, a slick-talker who knows more than he's telling. Alex is also the creator of Recall, which is all that's keeping him alive, but also what's keeping him in the colony.

There's also Janice, a nightclub owner missing an eye, and her chief goon, looking for several girls who've went missing just like Bekkah. You have Moscow, the drug lord who controls Alex, but is increasingly less concerned with such matters. A Dr. Watkins, who keeps dumping people into the Anomaly. The bodies he brings back are comatose at first, and rapidly rotting from within, while odd, glowing stone appear in the mines outside the colony.

And then there's the history of the colony itself. Each issue begins with part of a recording by Langford Skaargred, the idealist who started the colony. He had a dream for it, but like most dreams, when brought into reality, there were pieces missing, or things that just no longer made sense. He turned to Moiratech for financial help, but their dream, to the extent they had one, was simply more of what they already had.

Neither got what they wanted. Roche Limit is no shining waypoint on humanity's trek to another galaxy, nor is it a great hub of commerce and corporate profit; it's a decaying, crime-ridden backwater Earth is all too willing to ignore. What Malhorta and Charles show us are tight clusters of apartment buildings, rehab clinics with cracked walls and dirty floors. Watkins has a dingy dissection lab with pipes and cables all over, and rooms full of cages. Janice's nightclub looks a little brighter, a little nicer, but it's an isolated outpost. The Moiratech CEOs seem to live in a vast auditorium in a skyscraper overlooking the city. It's big, and empty, and there's just nothing to it. No business takes place, no discoveries, no growth. More a tomb than anything else.

Likewise, the people we see are often small, taking up limited space in the panel or on the page. They're dwarfed by walls that hem them in, or an Anomaly that sucks them in and spits them out like the husk of a sunflower seed. Lots of people brandish firearms in this mini-series, but even when they actually shoot someone, they're not drawn as looking powerful or cool. Guns aren't much use in this situation, at best a temporary reprieve. 

Faced with a spiraling situation, we see the choices people make when about what's important. Some, like Moscow, embrace nothingness as a truth. Others retreat into their pasts, via Recall, but it leads to the same point, rotting them out from within, just faster. Still others focused on meaningless turf battles. Moreci introduces another crook who thinks that Moscow's lost focus and he can seize control of the drug trade. Great, he can be the biggest tick on a tiny, disease-riddled dog's ass, but that's enough for him. You could possibly lump Janice and Woodbury into this category, but there's at least some suggestion Janice actually cares about the girls that are going missing, and is trying to protect more than just her status. And when things fall to pieces, she and her crew face it together.

Sonya and Alex, ultimately, are striving to find someone they care about to move forward. Even if Alex knows there really is no future for him, he figures he can help someone who believed in him. Sonya and Bekkah both have experience with what drug addiction costs, but rather than fall back into reliving the happy times before it ruined things, they each, in their own way, try to make something better going forward.

Which makes it seem like this is an existential struggle against nihilism, in which case Skaargred's failure was not in the attempt, but in the fact he gave up. He saw his dream fall apart, and rather than try to salvage it, or even help anyone, he consigns himself to the vacuum. As for the Moiratech CEOs, they were only concerned with profitability and found themselves engulfed by something greater. In the process, it seems to have taken the drive from them.

It's strange; I would have figured people considered as successful as the 3 "explorernauts" had a rapacious will to consume and control, to have. As they are now (that's them in the splash page), they're marionettes with a lazy hand on the strings. Maybe they think, by granting Watkins time for his research, they'll learn how to control all this, but it feels like they want the takeover, but have no drive to make it happen. Content to wait for some critical mass to be reached. It's Moscow who lights the match and Moscow who, eventually, eliminates them as surplus to requirements. Downsized, in a sense.

What I Bought 3/24/2015 - Part 10

I had a dream a couple of nights ago where I was out jogging, and I was so happy about how easily I was running, on what was the second half of my jogging route. Then I was really disappointed when I woke up and went jogging, and did not feel like I was running free and easy.

Roche Limit #5, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta and Ben Holliday (artists), Jordan Boyd and Marissa Louise (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters) - Looks like a couple of crazy kids unlocked the power of love there on the cover. Not sure that's going to help them in the current situation.

Alex pulls Bekkah back out of the Anomaly, so her body is once again devoid of a soul. Now they can return to the colony and find her soul (which is the glowy pink thing those teens found initially, which has since fallen into Gracie's hands), and recombine it with her body. The doctor behind the whole thing dies in the landing (Alex having apparently learned his piloting skills from either Indiana Jones or Launchpad McQuack), but asks them to go find the soul that they just ejected from Bekkah's body. One thing at a time, though.

Moscow, formerly kingpin of the colony, now loyal servant of what is emerging from the Anomaly, kills the three founders who had been lurking in the shadows, even though they were also presumably servants of the same thing as him. Then he and his horde or sorta-zombies storm Gracie's place, kill everyone in there, and take Bekkah's soul. Alex arrives and somehow kills his way through the cannon fodder, and even takes out Moscow with one of those nifty, "slide under the sword strike, then shoot" moves. Soul recovered, he tracks down Sonya and Bekkah, who have procured an escape craft, reunite Bekkah with her soul, and take off. Except Alex still has that bomb in his chest, with a proximity sensor, so he can't go to Earth. He says his goodbyes, gets in a spacesuit, and drifts until he blows up. Back on the colony, that dark mass disgorges three creatures (they remind me of some of the Dark World creatures from Metroid Prime 2), which find that soul Watkins asked Alex to find. Because Alex couldn't be bothered, I suppose.

Which is an interesting place to end, I think. Before Alex dies, he takes a bit of his Recall drug, so he can relive a moment when Bekkah told him something that meant a lot to him. Namely, that she loved him for who he was, but also for the great person she thought he could be. But the supposed "great person" made no attempt to recover the soul that had been inadvertently placed within Bekkah's body, even when Watkins told him where it would appear. Alex just couldn't be bothered to even try. Bekkah's soul was important enough for him to risk going and getting, but that other person? Pfft, who has time for that?

It's an odd thing. The colony itself corrupts people, either because of the radiation coming from the Anomaly, or just something in the air and the soil (I wonder if the planet came from the other side of the Anomaly originally, wherever that would be). If you take Alex' drug, which uses minerals from the planet and refines them, it accelerates the process of making you one of the loyal followers of the Black Sun. A drug that encourages people to live in the past, rather than moving forward and making new memories, makes you a slave of this strange thing. But just living on the colony will do the same thing, if you stay long enough.

The Black Sun seems to be one of those set-ups where they want to remove the uncertainty and need, by removing everything about the person. Like how Darkseid wants to bring "order" to the universe, by eliminating any will other than his own. So how does that intersect with a drug that keeps one stuck in the past? I guess if they're in that happy or loving moment, they want for nothing, so the search to fill any emptiness inside them evaporates. But they stagnate?

Why are some people seemingly mindless zombies, but others, like Moscow, seem to retain some aspect of personality, and possibly even individuality? I have this feeling Moscow, and those three founders came to the Black Sun under other circumstances, but I'm not sure what. The founders were explorers originally, so they could have traveled all the way through the Anomaly, but I can't picture Moscow subjecting himself to that experience. My guess is the founders contacted the Black Sun, whatever it may be, directly, trying to make a bargain with it. Power, eternal life, something. Moscow notes before he kills them that they were looking for fulfillment through greed, though that can take many forms.

I can't put it all together. How does the Anomaly separate a person from their soul? Why is the body still capable of functioning without it, or with another person's soul in there? Why doesn't the person seem any different with someone else's soul? Bekkah seemed like Bekkah (as far as Alex and Sonya were concerned) even with someone else's soul, and that soul didn't fight to avoid being booted out of that body at all. Which seems odd. I'd think it would struggle to avoid becoming disembodied again.

The next mini-series is supposed to be set 75 years in the future. If the Black Sun has had that long to establish itself on the world, we might get a better idea of what it's after and what it is. That's my biggest issue with this mini-series, it was hard to care about most of the characters, because we didn't really get to know them much. Gracie clearly had a long backstory, and it probably heavily involved both Moscow and her subordinate, Woodbury, but we never got much of it. As a result, I didn't feel much of anything when they died.

What I Bought 1/28/2015 - Part 2

The weather reports said flurries over the weekend, we got about 5 inches. So far, that's the most significant snow we've had this winter, though they're talking about more tomorrow. I don't have to do much driving these days, so the only reason it bugs me is that the road crews didn't get it cleared off entirely, and what's left get packed down until it's like ice (assuming it isn't actually ice). Running on ice isn't much fun, since your feet slip a little on every step. Walking through snow is another matter, provided you have good footwear, but that's neither here not there.

Roche Limit #3 and 4, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta (artist), Kyle Charles (art assists, #3), Lauren Affe (colorist, #4), Jordan Boyd (colorist, #3), Jim Campbell (letters, #4), Ryan Ferrier (letters, #3) - I have kept thinking that face reminds me of something, and it finally hit me. That episode of Scooby-Doo, where the robot is running amok through the old amusement park. He looked like just like that poor guy there to the left. So all we need to solve the problems on this colony are pot-smoking teens are their Great Dane.

Alex (the drug maker with the bomb on his chest) and Sonya (the cop from earth) continue their search for Sonya's sister Bekkah. But it seems the people addicted to Alex' drug are developing some ugly side effects. Black eyes, bad skin, tendency to speak in dire warnings, that sort of thing. They track down a scientist named Sinclair, who is behind the disappearance of her sister, but claims he isn't. And his goon got ahold of a cane with a gun hidden in it, so they had to back off.

There's a lot of running around, but it boils down to this: When Sinclair dumps women into the anomaly, it separates their souls from their body. this was discovered by some of the initial explorers, who are presumed dead, but are still lurking in the background somewhere, preparing. He reels the bodies back out, and the soul pops up in the mines, as those glowy things the two teens found one of previously (which they subsequently lost to the goons working for that madam, Grace, though I doubt she has any clue what it is). If the body remains soulless, it turns into these black-eyed weirdos (though it doesn't have to be the same soul. In fact, Bekkah is up and moving around with someone else's soul in her, though I can't tell if it makes a difference). But it'll happen anyway, because the planet itself is poisonous, because of something the anomaly emits. And Alex' drug, made from minerals found on the colony, provides a concentrated dose. Now all the empty/poisoned wackaloons Sinclair has collected from his tests have been set loose by former kingpin/black-eyed wackaloon Moscow, and are killing everyone else in service of whatever is on the other side of the anomaly. Sinclair, Alex, Sonya, and Bekkah know doodley squat about all that, because they went back out into space to try and get Bekkah back to normal by dunking her in the anomaly again. Except something is coming through from the other side, probably the Black Sun all the wackaloons worship.

I have no idea how all this is going to come together. There's only supposed to be one issue left in this arc, and I don't know if the next arc (whenever that comes out) will pick up where this leaves off, or if it'll time jump forward, or maybe backwards. I don't really follow how Bekkah can have someone else's soul in her, yet she apparently behaves and remembers all the things Bekkah does. But without one, you become some weird, murdering, dark-eyed lunatic thing.

You could really tell Malhorta was getting assisted on the art near the end of issue 4. Characters' faces got considerably less distinct and more simplified. Some of the buildings look really rushed. But the color work is still excellent. I especially like how vivid the Anomaly is. It's this bright light that naturally draws the eye, that dominates every scene it's in. And yet, it's deadly. We want to explore it, find out of there's something on the other side, but that doesn't lead anywhere good.

Although, you explore, and you lose your soul, and become a slave to some larger, destructive force? Kind of an odd message. I mean, yes, everyone who stays there is doomed to that fate, but the people exploring get it faster, even than the people who try to use a drug to escape into fond memories of their past.