She’s been training to defeat a threat her whole life. The final confrontation might not go as planned in a story by writer Alex Segura and artist Zander Cannon. Elsewhere, there’s a guy who has never had physical contact of any kind...and there’s someone outside his home in a story by David and Maria Lapham. These stories and more fill Xino #2--Oni Press’s appealing sci-fi anthology. Writer Francois Vigneault tells a tale of the ancient past with artist Artyom Trakhanov. The most strikingly simple tale of the whole issue has to be writer Hagai Palevsky’s “Testimonial.” Artist Carson Thorn draws a chilling little dystopian world to a very satisfying anthology. 

It’s her destiny to fight the threat that has come just a little bit too early. She’s up against something that she really hasn’t had an opportunity to deal with. Elsewhere, there’s this guy...he’s trying to come up with the right name. He’s been saddled with “Blue Jaguar” since birth. Now, he’s distracted by a woman who wants to see him in person. She calls herself 100%LuckyLemons. Elsewhere still, a Sparrow employee is wearing a vest from the production floor as he reads from a teleprompter about how nice it was to have been brought back to life by the corporation. 

Palevsky’s sinister dystopia might be one of the more obvious stories in the entire issue, but its last panel hits like a hammer even though it’s impossible not to see it coming. That’s quite an accomplishment. Sci-fi anthologies with micro-fiction shorts have a tendency to want to hit with an unexpected stinger punchline. Palevsky’s approach is a hell of a lot more bold than that. The Laphams’ story is an interesting contrast. The characterization in the story lends overwhelming charm to both of its main characters in a deeply weird dystopian sci-fi romance. 

Oni has put together an impressively varied group of artists for the second issue of the anthology. Carson Thorn’s somber, heavy inks deliver a kind of photorealism to the page that totally rebounds from the rubbery cuteness of Laphams’ preceding romance. Cannon’s issue-opening action feels deeply immersive...like it was pulled out of some weird parallel dimension. It has its own grammar that feels remarkably smooth and visually bright in a way that few contemporary comics have the courage to be. 

Xino is remarkably fresh. Sci-fi anthologies have been around since the dawn of comics. Since the 1960s in America, they’ve largely been cool little indie comics like Xino. It’s too bad the format hasn’t caught on in the States quite as well as it has elsewhere. There’s a lot that can be done with just a few pages that can’t be done in an ongoing format with huge ensembles and such. Hopefully, Oni meets with enough success in Xino that it can keep trying this sort of thing in the future. The issue is a great deal of fun with one-shot stories that have more impact than some titles do in a year. 

Grade: A