Remote Space #3 // Review
Mr. Higgs wants Levi Wells found and destroyed. He’s willing to assign all assets in the entire region to the task And since Mr. Higgs appears as a crimson skeleton with flaming eyes, his command seems pretty damned intimidating. Nevertheless, he’s asked WHY Wells’ eradication is so important. So naturally, Mr, Higgs is going to have a hell of a time explaining why an ostensibly dead person like Wells would be so important in Remote Space #3. Writer/artist Cliff Rathburn continues an interesting science fiction fantasy that mixes hard science with something altogether more magical to create a refreshing, new story.
Higgs had used Wells to harness everyone...get them to abandon their free will. That sort of thing. Of course...Wells wasn’t going to be happy about the situation and so he tried to do his best to deal with an unjust system that he helped establish. Those in power destroyed him. Only thing is...they can’t find him now and THAT is a bit of a concern. Meanwhile, there is some success and there are some challenges to success in a botanical research dome in Antarctica. The problem is that someone has hacked the droids and gone all homicidal and such.
Rathburn lowers-in a hell of a lot of background information in the course of the first few pages of the issue. And while it’s all pretty interesting and everything, the exposition isn’t at all integrated with Rathburn’s art. As a result, it looks pretty and it’s got some interesting backstory, but it’s not terribly engaging until the robots in Antarctica go crazy and then...then it’s all action. Pretty much. Rathburn might really have something here if he could only manage to integrate the art and the story in a way that had the art actually telling the story that he was trying to get across.
Aside from telling and not showing for much of the story, Rathburn’s art remains really interesting visually. He’s got a very dynamic understanding of action and a very sharp use of open space around the edges of the action. Everything feels perfectly well aligned from beginning to end and it all looks really appealing. It’s just too bad that Rathburn the writer isn’t working too well with Rathburn the artist, because if BOTH of those guys could work together just a bit better, the whole issue (and probably the whole series) would feel a whole lot more satisfying.
On the whole, though, Rathburn is working with sci-fi concepts that feel solidly well ahead of most of the rest of what’s on the mainstream comics rack today. That’s actually really, really cool. The specifics of the physics of what’s going on are really interesting. As is the overall run of things with respect to the rest of what’s going on, but I mean...if Rathburn is successful enough with what he’s doing in the course of this mini-series, it’s possible that he could really end up sinking into a rhythm between art and story with the next Remote Space series to really develop something.
Grade: B-
