Barbarella #2 // Review
There’s something strange going on at Planet Metrafuson. It’s an artificial planet entirely owned by a corporation, so there is likely to be some sort of an issue with what’s going on. Normally a very talented agent would be going-on to check things out, but she’s off at Planet V in Barbarella #2. Writer Blake Northcott continues the current sci-fi satire with the aid of artist Anna Morozova and colorist Werner Sanchez. The strange mix of space fantasy and cyberpunk continues to wind and twist across the page with some fun visuals as the story continues through its second outing.
Planet V is a planet size studio for scripted drama. Barbarella and the owl-shaped script droid are going to have some trouble making it through strange maze of different sets and situations of artificial narratives that are all slightly out of synch with each others things run the risk of becoming very, very confusing very, very quickly. And we are complexity goal is, violence can sometimes follow. I was going to be a degree of danger for everyone involved.Perhaps a simple deus ex machina from the heart of an owl might be able to rectify things a bit.
Northcott is working with some time-honored traditions with respect to action based sci-fi satire. The type of thing that’s been done a million times before. However, there is a certain amount of appeal in the way, Northcott is putting it together. The story as it is presented doesn’t quite live up to the satirical potential of the premise. It is, however, quite enjoyable from a variety of different angles. Strange drama and stranger action alternate pretty efficiently and fluently through a comedy bad works on a few different levels, but deeper satire is never quite completely achieved.
Morozova holds that delicate combination of beauty, weirdness and action together quite well. There are some visual references to a number of different weird bits of fantasy. Overall, Morozova manages to plan of action with comedy quite well. This isn’t something that’s always all that easy to achieve for most artists. She makes it look kind of easy actually. The fluidity of the combination of action and comedy. Morozova is working with and is up feeling very fresh from beginning to end. It will be interesting to see where the visuals in the series go from here.
There have been a few different attempts at exploring Barbarella on the comics page since she was inteiduced over half a century ago. While the current series isn’t exactly inspired, it is definitely enjoyable for a number of different reasons they don’t seem to be expiring towards that kind of depth. It’s nice to see them maintaining the appeal of an old and spacefaring venture hero. It would be nice to see them move off into more thoughtfully rendered a satire. All of the basic elements are there. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance of comedy and drama, to make it work. They’re not quite there yet.
