By Zack Quaintance — I’ve written about this before, but there is a surfeit of gloomy dystopian comics being made right now. A lot of these books are near-future looks at what could happen to the United States in the next few decades or centuries, often extrapolating ideas like American First Trumpism to (even more) horrific places. It’s tempting to lump Space Bastards #1 — a new series from Humanoids out this week — with that group, but it’s not that. Not quite.

Space Bastards #1 — which is illustrated by Darick Robertson (The Boys, Transmetropolitan) and written by the team of Eric Peterson and Joe Aubrey, with colors by Diego Rodriguez and letters by Simon Bownland — does incorporate post-capitalism dystopian elements, to be sure. They are, in fact, inherent to the premise. This is a book about intergalactic mercenary mail men. The way parcel delivery works in this future is that every time a parcel changes hands, the reward for delivering it goes up, at great cost to whoever is sending it. So, one mercenary mail men (I love typing that phrase) sets out with a package, they get exploded, and someone else picks the package up to make more money.

It’s an interesting premise that raises questions about and speaks to a number of current events, from Amazon’s treatment of its employees to the recent governmental gutting of the U.S. Postal Service to the gig economy, but at the same time, this is a comic that doesn’t really need any of that. That’s not to say evoking these ideas isn’t effective. No, it’s just to note that this first issue, Space Bastards #1, is 45 pages of sheer adrenaline, of gritty action-packed sci-fi storytelling that keeps its main character at its heart instead of relying on the capital I Important thoughts about modern values and society.

Robertson is an underrated and all-time great modern comics artist, and Space Bastards #1 gives him a chance to show off his vast imagination and finely-honed storytelling chops in equal parts. The visual action storytelling is immersive and tense, be it during our protagonists first bouts with fighting for his life or in a scrum where a dozen would-be delivery people are being eviscerated by a grenade. It’s all super well-done, speeding the reader from one sequence to the next without ever feeling light or flimsy. And its expertly aided by Rodriguez’s colors and Bowland’s letters, both of which add to the mayhem without ever feeling distracting.

At the same time, the design work here is crucial to putting us in a distant-yet-recognizable world. It’s all in the small touches, the little flourishes of practical technology, the clothes the characters wear, the giant mainicorn spaceships that look like a melding between a unicorn and male genitals (wait…). None of this, however, would stand out if the story here wasn’t rooted so heavily in its main character.

The beating heart of Peterson and Aubrey’s script is a corporate accountant who is unceremoniously laid off, left by his wife, frozen out of his bank account, and facing total poverty. He is a mild mannered guy who has to quickly turn to the lethal game of intergalactic package delivery. It all happens pretty quickly, which is mostly fine, and by the end of this first over-sized issue our man has somehow gone from appalled at being stabbed for the first time to one of the most ruthless villains in the game. And it’s all somehow entirely relatable.

This is, overall, the exact sort of dystopian comic I’d been wanting for months (if not years) without fully realizing it. There are questions about our values and future trajectory here, but they aren’t so clumsily laid out that they interfere with the imaginative storytelling or poignant character beats. The year is early, but I already have Space Bastards pegged as one of my most surprising and exciting new series of 2021.

Overall: Space Bastards #1 is a fast and intense read built upon questions about capitalism, desperation, and the demands of cold societies. Most importantly, it’s all brought to life by the finely-honed action sci-fi visual storytelling of Darick Robertson. 9.5/10

REVIEW: Space Bastards #1

Space Bastards #1
Writers: Eric Peterson and Joe Aubrey
Artist: Darick Robertson
Colorist: Diego Rodriguez
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Publisher: Humanoids
Poor David S. Proton. A meek, unemployed accountant desperate for money, he joins the Intergalactic Postal Service, paired with Manny Corns, a.k.a. "The Manicorn," a sardonic brute who thrives on the competition provided by the IPS. But delivery is mercenary for these intergalactic dispatchers-payment goes solely to whoever fulfills the delivery, making every run a comically violent free-for-all between the most ruthless degenerates in the cosmos. Stand back, Lobo! Make way, Han Solo -- here come the Space Bastards!
Price: $5.99

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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.