Horizon #1

Writer: Brandon Thomas
Artist: Juan Gedeon
Colorist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Rus Wooton
Publisher: Image

Image's slate of new sci-fi oriented comic books continues with Horizon #1. Last week we got Throwaways, which I liked enough that I'll probably get the next issues. Image will release more titles in the genre like Afar, Vs., and Mechanism over the next few months. Although sci-fi can mean many different things, even without considering books from other publisher it's a bit of crowded field right now.

Horizon is the story of a group of aliens led by Commander Zhia Malen that decide to pre-emptively retaliate against an Earth invasion. Thomas hints at a critique of global warming and the geopolitcal climate through news dispatches and the protagonist's speech. A lot of the problems I had with the book had do with me failing to fully understand what I was reading but at the same time, I don't feel the writer and artist did a great job of conveying what was happening. I don't think it's a complicated book so fat, but issue #1 moves at a tedious pace.

Wooton's lettering differentiates between the alien's language and english, which is a nice touch and Thomas' script plays the difference up with Zhia being unable to understand english for about half the book. There's a big focus on her tech gadgets, which is not usually the thing that I care about, but here it ends up being really confusing as some of them look very similar and it was hard to figure out what each of them did and thus I did not understand what I was reading for a few pages.

My favorite thing in the whole book was the way in which Juan Gedeon's art emphasizes Zhia's physicality. A large part of the book focuses on establishing how strong and fast she is, she catches up to a freight car at one point and her armor looks incredible in the final page. Frank Martin's colors were alright for the most part but the 2-page spread towards the end is dominated by pale shades of green and red which are really displeasing to look at that. Zhia delivers a monologue of sorts in front of a map of the United States highlighting the location and status of other alien agents. Aside from the aforementioned armor design, it ends on a whimper.

I think the issue ends up falling flat, it does alright getting its point across but there's too much hinted at that's left unexplained in the end and the art doesn't draw you in. There's something here but it just didn't pique my interest enough.