Thursday, August 23, 2012

Planetoid #3

by Ken Garing
One of the things that most attracted me to The Walking Dead when I first started reading it was that Robert Kirkman wasn't just interested in showing his characters escaping death time and again, he was interested in showing them trying to come to grips with all that had happened to the world, and to slowly begin rebuilding.

With this third issue of Planetoid, Ken Garing does much the same thing.  Silas, our main character, has found himself stranded on a metal-covered planetoid.  Last issue, he rescued a tribe of nomads from the planetoid's robotic defenders.  At the very end of the issue, they pledged themselves to him.

Now, in this issue, Silas has become the leader of a coalition of tribes, solo scavengers, and a few members of a frog-like race.  His goal is to repair a recently-crashed ship, with the hopes of leaving the planetoid.  He spends the entire issue organizing and building a camp for everyone.  They all contribute, finding sources of food, engaging in reptile husbandry (there are no mammals), and learning to use tools and machines that they have scavenged.  There is little conflict or drama in this issue, but I found that I really got into the society-building aspect of it all.

Garing has come out of nowhere with this series, and it has impressed me a great deal with its intelligence and straight-forward approach to interesting science fiction.  I also really like his art - just check out how awesome that cover is.  This is a very good series that I'm not hearing as much about as I think I should be.

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