“It could be that our collective fate will be the same as this book. May that’s all any of us are… a letter to the Universe no one will ever read.”
Welcome back to Lonely Sci-Fi month! This week, Mike and Alex are tackling Mark Russell and Roberto Meli’s Traveling To Mars (issues #1-11) from Ablaze Comics. The guys start by looking at this book in relation to Mark Russell’s other comics (such as The Flintstones and Not All Robots, just to name a couple) and examine how this comic may be the ultimate Mark Russell Comic(tm), where all of the satire and social commentary from all of his stories find a place here. They discuss how the epistolary-like narrative structure and presentation is an ideal format for the story they are trying to tell, and how Roberto Meli’s art captures the mood and sense of the isolation being experienced Roy, our main character. Finally, the guys step back a bit and view the comic through their lens of Lonely Sci-Fi and reflect on how it takes a very common science fiction prompt and flips it on its head to tell a completely different kind of story.
We continue with Lonely Sci-Fi month next week when we’ll be diving into Gone (issues #1-3) by artist/writer Jock from DSTLRY. Find it wherever you get your comics and we’ll see you back here again next week!