Spaceman Deluxe Edition is a dark, divisive, mature graphic novel

Spaceman Deluxe Edition is the collected work of the Vertigo, Spaceman comic, issue 1-9.    It’s the story of a post apocalyptic world where major cities are flooded, genetically created spacemen explore alien worlds, do manual labor and reality television entertains the masses. 

Orson is the main Spaceman.  The spacemen were created with expandable bones and flesh so that they could travel through space easier.  When they’re not in space looking for rocks they boats around flooded areas on Earth looking for scrap metal that he can sell for cash.

One day when Orson is out he sees a boat explode and rescues their two passengers.  One of the passengers is Tara, a young girl who is starring in a reality television show.  Tara has gone missing and everybody is looking for her.  For Orson to find her is quite a good thing, until the mobsters, producers and other spacemen want Tara too.

Spaceman is written by Brian Azzarello with art by Eduardo Risso who are the Eisner Award winning creators of 100 Bullets.  Spaceman did have its moment for me, but overall it was just too dark, depressing and difficult to understand.

The dialogue is written as if a Rastafarian had a baby with Jar Jar Binks.  “Soree bout the NO before but the geepee satee in the sky……that’s okee”, is a sample of some of the Spaceman’s dialogue.    Reading the book was a challenge as you had to phonetically say the words on some panels to really understand what was happening.  And even when you did that, the story didn’t make sense sometimes.

The artwork is very interesting with the large cities abandoned.  It’s muted, contrasted in some area panels are stark and powerful.  However, Spaceman is labeled as a Mature comic, so there are plenty of f-bombs, graphic violence and adult like cartoon nudity.  In the end it was all too depressing for me to enjoy.  Some comic fans really enjoyed the “space noir” feel of the book and thought that book was creative and fun.  The dark plot, combined with the noir heros, in your face violence and difficult to follow dialogue made me wish that this Spaceman had remained in orbit.

If you like your graphic novels violent, mature and dark, then you might like Spaceman.  It’s not that my comics have to have bunnies and flowers in them, I’m down with a good anti-hero book.  However, this just had too many down beat variables for us to have mojo with this.

We were provided with a review copy of the book courtesy of Netgally.  All thoughts are our own.  

Every Wednesday is new comic book day at your local comic book shop.  It’s easy to  find your closest comic book shop, they’re small businesses, family friendly and just down the street from you.