By Zack Quaintance — The other day I sat down to read Gryffen: Galaxy’s Most Wanted by Ben Kahn, Bruno Hidalgo, James Penafiel, and Sal Cipriano. This book from publisher Starburns Industries Press, had been on my list for some time. I read all 12 issues basically as fast as I possibly could.

Gryffen, as I quickly found out, is an excellent comic, and I’ll get into why in a moment. But first, the premise: Captain Lyla Gryffen has dedicated their live to an Imperial Empire-esque galactic government organization known as the Sovereign Reach. Gryffen is a veteran of many mission, prized for their contributions to humanity’s control of the cosmos. Six months ago however, Gryffen dissapeered, and now they have resurfaced…kicking into action our plot.

I won’t spoil the exact nature of the twist, but I will point out something that will become evident by the end of the first issue: Gryffen comes back changed, and — to put it mildly — is no longer the good soldier. Owing to the aforementioned twist I won’t spoil, Gryffen comes back with an outsiders perspective that enables them to see how controlling, fascistic, and downright evil the organization they have served really is, and that’s the central conflict of this series: hero versus the governing body they once believed in (seemingly).

It’s a great premise, albeit one that makes good and evil pretty clear cut — which is just fine, especially in this year 2020 wherein many of us paying attention are compelled regularly by the news to all but pull our hair out at the false equivocating down between “sides.” Gryffen is a book that asserts simply that facism is wrong and evil, and goes from there. Relatable.

Thematically, Gryffen is certainly not alone in asserting that facism — or big monolithic power preservation that supports a flagging and diseased status quo — is a bad thing. What I found more interesting about Gryffen was the solution it offered was a mix of science and anarchy, which is perhaps something I have not ever seen before. The book doesn’t go into all that much detail about the nature of the science (which is just fine), but it does interestingly suggest tossing out damaging structures in favor of knowledge, which is awesome.

On a more specific level, Gryffen is one good-looking comic. Artist Bruno Hidalgo (who gets a color assist here from James Penafiel) is a massive talent, as capable of visionary sci-fi visuals as the artist is of highly-stylized, crisp character designs. Hidalgo is also one of the best sci-fi comics artist as it pertains to big action moments, deploying clean linework with high-energy rushing anime-esque backgrounds and just enough gruesome gore. It’s great stuff, and it contributed at a very high level to making Gryffen so compulsively readable that I blew through it as soon as I cracked the first issue. You can check out some of my favorite bits of the art (from the first half of the book) in a gallery below.

The whole story — which is split into perfect-length 11 or 12 page chapters — is paced at a breakneck and tense speed that I absolutely loved. The plot moves with the searing speed of Gryffen’s witty one-liners, never really giving the reader a chance to disengage with all the comics excellence flowing between face and page. In the end, Gryffen is just plain and simple great comic book-ery, and everyone involved should be proud.

There’s a lot of 2020 catharsis in this comic, which asks wouldn’t you love to be a better, no-nonsense version of yourself, fighting back against the damaging structures you’ve inadvertantly supported with a lover who is unselfish and also the smartest person in the universe? You can bounce around with a blaster, telling it like it is and not giving a single #$*# about anything but burning it down and rebuilding a world with knowledge at its center. Phew, I feel better just having typed that all of that.

Gryffen: Galaxy’s Most Wanted

Gryffen: Galaxy’s Most Wanted
Writer: Ben Kahn
Artist: Bruno Hidalgo
Color Assistance: James Penafiel
Lettering: Sal Cipriano
Publisher: Starburns Industries Press
Captain Lyla Gryffen dedicated their life to the Sovereign Reach. A veteran of missions on a dozen worlds, they were the pride of humanity. Six months ago, they disappeared at the edge of the galaxy. One week ago, they returned...
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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.