Star Pig #1 (2019) floats into our galaxy with teen girl, Vess, caught up in a funny, sci fi adventure! The IDW mini-series features a cover by Sara Richard. It has the Star Pig climbing on a ringed planet while Vess carelessly listens to music on a moon. The graphics make it look like a school folder. The creative team has writer, Delilah S. Dawson, who has the novel, the Violence, and also the fantasy series, Ladycastle. Also, there is the art of Francesco Gaston, the artist of Ms. Marvel #18 (2017) and Monsters Unleashed #9 (2017) for Marvel Comics. We have a space bus headed into space, in the cockpit, the teacher asks about their distance to Ferdowski Station.
She is told about some turbulence and she tells the cadets of the NAASA Space Camp about being strapped in. There is of course a real Space Camp, but I keep thinking of the sci fi movie SpaceCamp (1986). I like the Space Camp logo on jackets. 16 year old, Vess, is too busy listening to her retro Discman. Then, some thumping on the hull gets her attention. Her fellow cadet, Dooder, updates her on the turbulence, but it is more than that disturbance! She tries to get her belt on as air masks drop down. Vess takes a crash position and Dooder tells her she doesn’t have her harness on as the astroid collisions continue! A fiery cosmic body, a comet?, shatters the hull of the spacecraft.
It sends Vess into space without her air mask as the chair of Dooder also floats! This is a splash page with an insert panel. Vess thinks her farewell to her family, her moms and Jeyd. Vess drifts into unconsciousness as her body turns blue. Then, a gaping pink mouth swallows her! I keep thinking of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the Heart of Gold ship manages to take in Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect as they drift in space. Vess revives, I like her expressions, “What the Beck?” A voice apologizes to her. I like Gaston’s art style which reminds me a bit of Amanda Conner. It is the telepathic voice of the Space Pig who doesn’t know its identity. The Star Pig, a Tardigrade like in Star Trek: Discovery, but pink, is seen in a splash page above the broken space craft and Dooder still floating!
It is segmented with chitin and has six stubby legs. Vess walks around the Star Pig’s gusts and she makes a connection with the Sarlaac! It says it won’t digest her. Star Pig tells Vess that the others are in “a state of Tun”, hibernating, or Vess adds, dead. We see the body of the teacher in space, gruesome. Vess wants to know what is happening. Star Pig can only explain that it was experimented on, escaped, and they have to wait for scavengers. It seems content to sit on the remains of the engines. Vess wonders if it has any weapons, but Star Pig explains it’s just a large space pig! It mentions that Earth is popular in the univese and that scavengers will arrive to take artifacts.
Then, we have the arrival of the scavengers’ ship, a saucer-shaped, massive, yellow ship, with two large mandibles and a glass dome. Vess has a panic attack while the scavengers bring everything including the Tardigrade with a tractor beam. Star Pig notes he can survive almost anything. Tardigrades, also called water bears, are microcopic, 0.020 inches long. Something like The Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Inside the hold of the ship are the bodies of Dooder and Mrs. Lanning, Vess passes out. In the ship’s hold, they are discovered by a strange, purple cloud with several eyes in the front of its mass. It also is trapped in the lingo of the 50’s. The spore cloud, calling itself Johnny B. Goode, considers the human, Vess, as a collectible, and also Space Pig as a rare secret to immortality! Vess somehow has to survive these two bizarre entities in the first issue of Space Pig!
Four Asteroids out of Five!
#StarPig, #DelilahSDawson, #FrancescoGaston, #Vess, #Dooder, #JohnnyBGoode
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