Planet Paradise Vol. 1 is due out November 11, 2020. — **Planet Paradise Vol. 1** is due out November 11, 2020.

By Bruno Savill De Jong — Jesse Lonergan’s Planet Paradise is foremost an experiment of layouts and design. In this book, the sequential storytelling of comics is rearranged with large blank-spaces and innovative panel juxtaposition, reveling as much in ‘where’ the images are placed as ‘what’ is in them. It’s appropriate for a comic about a woman, Eunice, whose tourist space-ship heading for the titular pleasure planet gets knocked off-course onto a hostile world; her pre-arranged settings and plans have been displaced. Once there, Eunice fights off alien lifeforms and cares for the crotchety spaceship captain as they wait to get the passengers (still safely in hyper-sleep) back on-track.

Planet Paradise is not quite as action-packed as that sounds, since Lonergan is far more interested in the formalistic staging of the comic than any tension or introspection. The comic mainly delights in seeing how actions are completed (be it rescuing the captain from a hole, assembling an S.O.S. device or even the trajectory of the ship’s crash-landing), more so than any internal character-drama. Planet Paradise has little dialogue at all, and instead is a playful science-fiction tale that presents even the danger as whimsical and dry. One sequence shows another astronaut casually walking through and upside-down inside a spaceship, with diagrams connecting her panels with an exterior model of the ship. Planet Paradise is more about the inventive portrayal of everyday pieces and moments (‘everyday’ according to this sci-fi future at least) than building up to some grand design.

Planet Paradise is Lonergan’s follow-up to his short one-shot comic Hedra, and although the works share the same style Planet Paradise is far less abstract and more accessible than that completely silent geometric tale. At the same time, since Planet Paradise’s own ‘plot’ is still incredibly threadbare, you almost wonder if the basic skeleton makes it lose just a bit of Hedra’s uniqueness. Planet Paradise does also briefly show Eunice getting a taste for adventure, but it’s so negligible that there is not much to comment on. This is a comic more about the journey than the destination. And even aside from the innovative panel layouts, the artwork is pleasing and cheerfully cartoonish with a nice light pastel coloring that makes it a fun and enjoyable read. It is worth checking out to see the expressive potential of sequential storytelling. So, while Planet Paradise might not offer much thematic depth or many long-lasting sequences, it more than compensates with its expansive and innovative layouts and design.

Overall: This is a formalistic comic about the journey so much more than the destination, and it is well-worth checking out for the expressive potential of the storytelling risks alone. 9.0/10

REVIEW: Planet Paradise Vol. 1 by Jesse Lonergan

Planet Paradise Vol. 1
Writer/Artist: Jesse Lonergan
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $16.99
To survive after crash landing on an alien planet, a vacationer must battle against a hostile environment, killer lizards, corporate bureaucracy, and the pessimism of her sole companion, the drug-addled captain of the ship.
Release Date: November 11, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Planet Paradise Vol. 1

Read more great comic book reviews here!

Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.