By Zack Quaintance — Radio Spaceman: Mission to Numa #4 hooked me with its first page. The book, which is written by Mike Mignola (who also did the cover), opens with essentially the platonic ideal of a strong Mignola first page. Illustrated by Greg Hinkle with colors by Dave Stewart, the aesthetic falls somewhere between Guy Davis’ work on the classic Mignola-verse BPRD comics and Mignola himself.

You can view that page above, but it’s basically a set of establishing panels that place us in the wealthy and intricate home of someone very much beholden to the early 20th Century. It’s adorned with images that evoke thoughts of bygone science, possibly bordering on the fantastical, possibly bordering on the occult. There’s even an anatomically correct body dummy standing in a comfortable room, hinting at some sort of experimentation. The book opens with us sitting in all these motifs — and then the phone rings and we’re off.

What ensues from there feels like everything I enjoy the most from Mignola comics. The core idea is a relatively simple one. A spaceship crashes and its crew is incapacitated; then a mysterious scientist back on earth starts (radio?) controlling a robotic spaceman who undertakes a rescue mission. It feels relatively simple to type that, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it, not exactly. It’s fantastical and pulpy, yet grounded in eccentricities. It’s great.

Past that, the design of the lead character is perfect, and the figures at the center of the adventure are unimpressed — if not downright grumpy — about having to deal with it. As giant alien monsters rage and a crazed crewmen undertakes some kind of sinister space ceremony, the captive just remarks, “Really?” It’s all a good laugh, reminding me of some of my favorite Hellboy moments, wherein you can kind of feel Mignola (and sometimes his co-writers) taking stock of where their plotline has lead before stepping outside and making a character a mouthpiece to let readers know that, yes, they too realize this is absurd and ridiculous. The issue also ends on a fantastic cliffhanger, one I like even more because the scope of this series is a lean two issues.

Of course, none of it works without the artwork by Hinkle. The cover for this comic (see below) was done by Mignola, who actually created the character as part of what felt like casual pencil sketches. Hinkle’s work on this book is really stellar. There’s a slight Mignola influence, especially with the space stuff, but the work is perhaps more evocative of the underappreciated comics epic that Guy Davis illustrated during his massive run on the original BPRD books. Those comics were truly stunning, and while plenty of other very good artists took the baton there, I found myself thinking of those books fondly while reading this one. Hinkle is colored here by Stewart and the whole affair is lettered by Clem Robins; and both of them also worked on those books.

But Hinkle also goes on to make Radio Spaceman very much his own thing. There’s some exaggerated choices made with the cartooning that are just perfect for a story about a radio-controlled robo spaceman (operated in part by a crew of uniformed dudes with little lightbulbs on their heads). Acknowledged absurdity is such a key part of why I loved this comic, and the cartooning not only understands that but expertly pushes it forward, making clear what this whole thing is all about. I’m a huge fan, and I hope this little two-parter ends up being the start of Radio Spaceman, rather than the last we see of these ideas.

Overall: Here’s a sentence I did not expect to be tying this week — I LOVED Radio Spaceman: Mission to Numa 4 #1, to the point I think it’s up there with Monkey Meat as one of my favorite comics of the year so far. 10/10

REVIEW: Radio Spaceman #1

Radio Spaceman: Mission to Numa 4 #1
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Greg Hinkle
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Clem Robins
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
When a ship crashes and lands on a mysterious planet and some of the surviving crew go missing, the mysterious mechanical hero Radio Spaceman is called to investigate. But the planet hides much more than the missing crew, and Radio Spaceman may be stumbling into more than even he can handle.
Based on Mignola's viral pencil sketches, Radio Spaceman is a steampunk space adventure full of mystery, monsters, and awesome gadgets. Featuring the amazing art of Greg Hinkle (The Beauty, Black Cloud) and colors by longtime Mignolaverse collaborator Dave Stewart, this new series is perfect for Mignola fans old and new!
Price: $3.99
Buy It Here: Radio Spaceman - Mission to Numa 4 #1

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.