Review: Southern Cross Vol.1 by Cloonan,Belanger and Loughridge

Summary

Now boarding: Southern Cross, tanker flight 73 to Titan. Alex Braith is tracing her sister’s steps to the refinery moon, hoping to collect her remains and find some answers. The questions keep coming though-and they lead her down a path of intrigue, betrayal, and galactic horror.

My thoughts

I’m willing to try really just any comic published by Image Comics. They publish the greatest of stories and work with amazing artist which made them easily my favorite. I didn’t need to know that Southern Cross is by Image Comics though, to make me want to read it. The combination of stunning cover and a story about a space ship and an impending galactic horror made this a must read for me. Sadly, Southern Cross wasn’t what I hoped it would be and it fell flat for me. It had potential but I just didn’t get invested in the story, didn’t much care for it and was only mildly impressed by the art.

The story

The setting of the story was pretty awesome: a space ship that actually looks like a normal ship. A great setting doesn’t do any good though when the most important thing for me doesn’t work out: I didn’t care about the characters. I especially couldn’t stand the main character. Not just because of her grumpy personality but she just didn’t make me care about her. The other characters weren’t any better either, especially all the males which were kind of creepy in how they approached her.

To be honest, the only thing that kept me reading until the end instead of just giving up was the mystery. I wanted to know what is going on, why the main character’s sister died and what this impending galactic horror is. But even getting the answers to my questions wasn’t really satisfying. There is potential that after what happened at the very end, the story might pick up and go into a direction that would interest me more, but I don’t think I will keep reading this one.

The art

Color-wise I absolutely loved the art style of this comic. Only using different hues of just two colors made the panels look stunning, just like the cover does. Sadly, it didn’t turn out to be a style I like when I took a closer look.

Had I checked a preview of this comic it should have been clear to me that this might not be one for me. For the longest time I didn’t read any comics at all because I often didn’t like how people are drawn and had difficulties finding those I liked. Southern Cross is one of those that I don’t like. I can’t really explain what it is but it made enjoying the story a little harder for me and might even have had a small impact on how I felt about the characters, as in this specific case, they all looked so damn unfriendly.

Overall

Both cover and summary made me curious about Southern Cross but both the art and the story didn’t work out for me. I wish I would have liked it more because stories set in space are usually right up my alley, but I didn’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped.