SEA OF STARS #5
Story: Jason Aaron & Dennis Hallum
Artist: Stephen Green
Colorist: Rico Renzi
Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: 9/10 Asteshrooms
Song: Day ‘n’ Night (Nightmare) by Kid Cudi
Fathers and sons have had it rough in the history of comics. Origin stories are littered with tragedy surrounding the death of a father figure. You know the guys, no need to say who. But this father and son origin story plays out a bit different. What starts out as story similar to Finding Nemo plays out much different and much more grand.
Sea of Stars follows a young boy named Kadyn and his father, Gil. Gil is an interstellar long hauler, equivalent to an ice road trucker of our time. Long and dangerous hauls across vast reaches of space. Prior to his wife passing, he would leave his son with her while he was away for months at a time, providing financial stability for his family. But as widowed fathers know, it’s hard to find a baby sitter who would watch your kid for months at a time. So, on their first trek together, disaster strikes in the form a giant space whale(?) as it chomps down their rig while in flight causing a massive hull breach. The vacuum of space launches both father and son in opposite courses to single location, but very different adventures.
Gil carries with him a level of Space Trucker Bad-Assery throughout this series. His improvisation skills when greatly deviated from the charted course are clever and well thought out. Although his part in this story in pretty linear, in future arcs, i see a lot of room for development and plenty of time to be the badass this arc has foreshadowed. What really grasped at my heart strings was his perseverance in getting back to his son. The understanding that he was, up until recently, an absentee father. He has no idea how to even talk to the boy, a frustration that I’m sure many fathers have with their kids. But regardless of what needed to be done, he did it. All to be reunited with his little boy.
Kadyn is exactly what you’d imagine an 8-10 year old boy. Curious, rambunctious, easily distracted, and just learning how to talk back. Combine that with being bonded to an ancient alien artifact with unknown space magic properties and you’ve got yourself a child with potential to get in to some insane interstellar shenanigans. But before that happens, there’s a LOT of development that needs to happen. Tear away the curiousness and rambunctiousness and you have a boy who hasn’t come to terms with his mother passing and who has no relationship with his father. A relationship he has no idea he so desperately needs.
This issue concludes the first 5-issue arc in Jason “The Human Asgardian” Aaron’s 2nd (I think.) Image Comics title. It’s cliffhanger ending was by far the most frustrating thing about this series for me. Not so much frustrating, but it was like when I watched the Fellowship of the Ring the first time, where I felt that it was a bad place to end it. But one bad issue ending does not a bad comic make, quite the opposite actually. I’m fiending sooooo hard for issue six. Our 2 main protagonists, and AI with an attitude, a space monkey, a space dolphin(?), and a female huntress from a distant moon make for such a motley crew of hooligans that’s bound to only get in to so much more insane adventures and I can’t stress enough that you should read this.