‘The Karman Line’ by Dennis Hopeless with art by Piotr Kowalski is a graphic novel about a reality show streaming from a space station.

The astronauts aboard a space station are part of a reality television show. The show is to help raise interest in a mission to Mars, but ratings are lagging and interest is waning. While life on the station goes on, they suddenly each get independent messages warning of things on Earth and telling them to ‘ABORT MISSION AND GET HOME.’ Since the crew is international, the distrust begins. The fear ramps up when a crewmember is found dead.

It’s a brief quick story and the characters don’t get a lot of depth. It is pretty intense once the story starts rolling along and the art is pretty good.

This was requested when I first found out about NetGalley and I had requested so many ARCs that I could not get to all of them before they were archived. I really wanted to get to this one, as it seemed interesting. If I can find this somewhere for a reasonable price, I will try to get it! I am giving this book three stars, as I don't want to give it a good or bad rating, since I did not get to it and we have to leave a star rating.

A scifi horror graphic novel! This has my name written all over it, figuratively speaking, of course. I loved it.

I don't have much to say on this one. The art was beautiful but it was too short to be able to get a real connection to the story and characters. This was packed with heaps of drama which made this so entertaining!

In the near future the Earth is dying and no one seems to care. There's little support for a mission to Mars even though it's maybe our only hope. So to build up support, they send a content producer up with the astronauts to film the mission as a reality show. Things soon get serious when the astronauts all receive messages from their home countries to come home and make sure you're the only one. What are the astronauts to do? Things pick up very quickly from there.

At only 90 pages there's not a lot of character work here. It quickly becomes all about the action. I would have preferred a little longer series that had more explanations than the cursory ones given here. Be aware there's also a couple of somewhat graphic sex scenes that I thought were an unnecessary wrinkle to the story and didn't really add much other than an adult content warning.

The Karman Line by Dennis Hopeless
Thank you to NetGalley for sending me a free copy for an honest review
What's it about:
The camera rolling 24/7, there is never a dull moment at Keyhole station. Its all sex, lies and betrayal in the all-access reality show streaming frein space. When the international contestants receive a distress call from home, their mission goes critical! The cameras roll capturing their fight for survival can they stay level headed and make it back home in one piece?
The review:
I thought it was ok, art was good but yeah probably wouldn’t read again.
Rating 2 ⭐️

I accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher.
The premise of the book made it seem like a mystery/thriller in space, but that's not what you get. Instead, you get "reality tv in space" mixed with political issues in the background.

Thanks NetGalley and Mad Cave Studios for access to this arc

2/5 stars

What did I just read?? This had an interesting concept and low page count so I thought yeah let's give this a go, and, just... 🤷🏼‍♀️

The characters were flat and unlikable, the story wasn't introduced well from the off so it was confusing who was actually with who, and the plot twist was obvious from the start. Maybe if it had more pages and would have been fleshed out better (not literally, dont need more sex scenes lol) it would have been better, but it just felt ALMOST there, almost cared about the people who died, but again, 🤷🏼‍♀️

I didn't hate it so that's why it got 2 stars. I just didn't like it, lol

I received an ARC copy of this book via Netgalley (thank you). All thoughts and opinions are mine.

I really liked it. Some of the characters did some things, but they had their own reasons. So i forgive them.

I liked the concept of the book, where a reality show participants took the show to another level. But, the plot was confusing. I could not understand a thing about what was happening with the characters. Also, the climax was more confusing than the plot. I felt like the plot had a major word missing “WHY?”. I could only give 3 stars to the book. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an opportunity to read and review the book.

Sci-fi fan? This is a good example of great storytelling. We know this is not real, but it's easy to forget.
I would recommend this because of the drama more than the characters! Although they are interesting, they are not my favs

The Karman Line is a very interesting thought experiment about what could happen in today's world if we decided to send a Reality Show into orbit. The tone is a little similar to Don't Look Up, or The Boys except it doesn't feel like it's trying to be satirical in its criticism? or maybe it's not trying to make a criticism at all. I think if the goal was to tell a fun what if type story that's good, but it hard to get a grasp of what it's actually trying to play off of. On one hand it feels very dated, and maybe even a little offensive in it's depictions of every government except the US. While the US government gets portrayed as a little unserious and Reality TV obsessed the other governments get portrayed as snakish and oppressive, and while some people might agree with that, I personally don't think this piece is doing itself any favors by portraying the US as morally superior. And, like I said, maybe its just trying to tell a dynamic interesting story, but to me it just made the story feel dated to that 90-00s political thriller graphic novel style that I feel is a little behind us at this point. As far as the rest of the story goes, the Story was well paced and the hammy, stereotypical backstories did fit the narrative. I enjoyed it overall..

1/5

A great art killed by its story.
This is a basic summary of what I felt at the end of this book.
I honestly understood nothing and I'm still so dang confused on what actually happened throughout the whole reading.

The characters had zero personality, there's zero background on what and why all this is happening and we have zero explanation on what all this means. I'm scared those less than 100 pages were not in the least enough to create a good backstory and world building.

The art was actually great, but that's about it, definitely not for me :/

Privacy. The final frontier.

In order to gain support for an international space mission, the astronauts on board have agreed to a constant, all-access live-stream of life on board. But science doesn't sell, sex does, and soon their lives are split between actual work and acting.
And then each crew member gets a private message. At war. Come home. Alone. By any means necessary.

It is time, as they say, to stop being polite, and start getting real. Reeeeeeeal murdery.

A rapid, shocking read! I quite enjoyed the premise here, which feels all-too believable. Science is expensive, and chasing the money often leads to challenged morals. So the more expensive a project, the more challenge there must be. And, I mean, there's also quite a lot of livestreams to the ISS, so an all -access pass seems logical! Hell, I bet there's even premium feeds!

Cynical, but enjoyable. A nice afternoon read, for when you already don't have a lot of hope for the world.

Advanced reader copy provided by the publisher.

A beautiful cover and a great little blurb led me to picking up "The Karman Line". A dead crew member and a message to abort mission sounds great, right? That's about where the positives end.

What I thought was going to possibly be an intriguing murder mystery/thriller was instead social media/reality TV commentary at the expense of any sort of engaging story. At just 96 pages, it feels truncated, but no additional pages were saving this mess. The dialogue was awkward throughout, and the characters were so bland. I either hated them or couldn't care less about them. Maybe that's my fault for expecting something more than "Big Brother" in space.

The artwork was fine, and with a better story would have fit the setting. As I said before, the cover of the novel is especially gorgeous, enough to trick me into opening it.

Thank you to Mad Cave Studios and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It has a lot of big interesting concepts, but unfortunately the story is rushed too quickly to flesh any of them out. The writing is a bit chaotic and none of the characters feel well developed. The art was fine, but that doesn't save the poor story. This just feels like an outline or a first draft for what should have been a much longer page count or a series.

The Karman Line is an excellent idea that sadly misses the mark in the end. At just 90 pages, I feel like what is probably suffered from the most was a lack of time to know the characters better and develop more in the story so that the twists and surprises would be more impactful. As it is, this is full of action and has interesting messages that sadly gets a bit lost in the end.

Note: arc provided by the publisher via netgalley in exchange for honest review

I had such high hopes for this graphic novel and it just did not have the impact that I wanted it to. In The Kármán Line we follow a group of people in space and they are filming a reality TV show. When the unthinkable happens to them they have to do whatever it takes to survive.

Normally this would be right up my alley, and that cover is one of the best covers I have ever seen. However, this graphic novel was confusing. The plot loses threads and it was hard to follow. The characters also never gained any dimension and we got so little information about them that you didn’t care if they lived or died.

A big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Mad Cave Studios for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This graphic novel/comic left me confused. The story follows a space crew that is doing a Big Brother-esque reality show in space to help raise the public’s acceptance for space exploration.
It puts its emphasis on the scandal and life threatening situations in order to entertain the masses. I liked the really detailed graphic style and the harsh critique on sensationalism. On the other hand I sadly could not feel empathy for any of the characters. The narration was confusing and felt unfinished to me. Especially the dialogues were not to my liking. The story is lacking a flow which is further interrupted by a backflash.
I’m really sad I didn’t like it more since I really feel that the overall message is an important one.

I received an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley and Mad Cave Studios!

CW: violence and death (obvi)

3.5 stars

This book felt like James Tynion IV’s The Nice House on the Lake with an interstellar twist. With an apocalyptic war suddenly breaking out across Earth, astronauts-turned-reality-TV-stars have to do the unthinkable to survive.

There were characters I wish I could’ve gotten to know more thoroughly, but given the length, I wasn’t anticipating getting full backgrounds. The narrative felt focused on three main characters (Marion, Diya, and Alexei) while the others drifted into the background. This isn’t necessarily bad, just that the cast feels somewhat smaller than what’s on the page.

That being said, I had a good time reading it. It was fun, twisty, and entertaining. The art is fantastic and the storytelling was effective in what it set out to do.

Overall, if you’re looking for a quick read full of action and drama, this is the one for you.