One of the most amazing aspects of SWOProductions is getting to work with and review highly talented independent creators. So whenever someone reaches out to me on social media and asks me to review one of their works, I’m not only honored they respect my opinion enough to have me go over their project; I’m excited to get to take a gander at something many others may not have gotten a chance to experience yet!
And that’s where we are today: checking out COMX Studio’s Stellarlands! It even as an introductory trailer, so let’s take a quick look at that.
Pretty bad-ass, right? But does the comic itself match the quality of that hype teaser? Let’s see…
TITLE: Stellarlands (click here to order your own copy!)
Writer and Artist: Max Ferrada and Ben Worrell
Publisher: Comx Studio
Protagonists: Anvil Liza
Antagonists: The Pelothraxil Army
Stellarlands is the story of Daffney Meadows, also known by her superhuman designation, Anvil Liza. We start the tale off without any narration or backstory, with Ferrada instead opting to go the much superior “Show, Don’t Tell” route of some early world-building. He respects his readers enough to throw them right into the deep end of his universe and let them float.
In this first issue, Daffney takes an assignment–from the panel apparently in charge of these things–to recover at-risk data from a moon base that is about to be descended upon by antagonistic alien forces.
Upon arriving on the moon of planet Apolaki, Daffney immediately comes across Pelothraxil forces and finds herself in a firefight. Despite her considerable powers, Daffney is put down by a kind of neural inhibitor weapon… but the ones who put her down were not the army, but instead are two children who have long-since been abandoned on the moon.
These two kids, Nel and Nefn, have made a life for themselves on the moon after the passing of their parents who died while on a black-ops mission. Nel and Nefn’s primary goal is to protect the natural life on the moon, and so they strike up a reluctant partnership with Daffney against the more violent Pelothraxil forces.
I gave the book credit early on for its bold choice to put readers in the deep end of this world–and that stands–but it backpedals a bit when Daffney meets her two partners. Since these two kids have missed years of time while being stranded on the moon, they don’t really know what happened during the war in which their parents were involved. So Daffney serves as the exposition machine to fill them (and the readers) in on background lore.
These details might be relatively inconsequential in the long-term, but I will admit to being a bit sad we didn’t have the info of the two large wars of the past several years doled out more slowly, perhaps through flashbacks and back-up stories. Daffney gets some walls of text about various alien wars that made my head swim a bit because, as just black words in a white text bubble, they didn’t “mean” anything to me, if that makes sense. It was an info dump in the middle of a story I was already invested in, so it felt too much like a distraction from where I wanted things to be.
As far as the overall story goes, aside from the intergalactic war element of it all–often a plot point that feels a little out of my personal scope of appreciation–we find out that Daffney has a seemingly pretty severe alcohol addiction. That and her straight-forward and gruff personality really humanize her. There’s something to root for right away: we want to see our protagonist overcome her demons, but we also know it will be a very hard struggle and a long road.
What’s more, overcoming any addiction is not a one-off battle, so I expect this will be something she has to fight as long as the series goes on. That genuinely makes me feel for her as a character, so Ferrada has put in the creative touch to make me emotionally invested right away.
The art in this series is phenomenal for an independent book. Ben Worrell does some really inspired and gorgeous work here. He alternates close-ups ands big shots that have immense detail and great focus with further out shots that give more space for characters to emote and act out to help the words have more oomph. It’s all very beautiful and deftly handled.
The coloring, too, is on point. It’s bright and bold, giving a very cartoonish life to Worrell’s world. Everything pops, especially the deeper colors like the bright reds or the like. I much prefer lively coloring to a more muted or “realistic” palette, so I dig the work here by Wilson Go, the team’s colorist. This is a rich galaxy I’d love to be a part of.
OVERALL
I absolutely love the art here. There are aspects for Worrell to work on, like changing facial expressions from panel to panel at times, but by-and-large, it’s exactly the kind of style I look for in books I am reading. The writing is slightly weaker than the art just because of the exposition dumps, but without those, I like the ideas at play here. I’m invested in Daffney’s struggle with alcoholism, and I look forward to getting more natural world-building as the saga rolls on.
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