That was a lot! Free Planet Vol. 1 follows a team of heroes that are trying to defend their home after breaking free from their previous corporation owners. Now there are multiple intergalactic superpowers that are trying to claim the planet for themselves.But everyone has their own ideas about what freedom is. Can they get together to fight for total freedom?

Wow, this took me a while to read. The story was mainly world building and getting to know the characters and what they stand for. A lot of side stories too. I wanted to DNF it so many times because I’m used to quick graphic novel reads. Some of the pages go sideways and upside down. I understand it is to make the story more immersive but it was annoying to me. It honestly wasn’t more me. I did enjoy the art work and illustrations! Recommend it if you are into world building scifi with multiple characters and multiple stories.

The story opens as the war of independence concludes and the mining planet 'Aides announces itself truly free, taking on the name Lutheria instead; it's never mentioned, but I can only assume that the extraneous apostrophe was one of the things they were rebelling against. So it's straight into the messy business of reconstruction, the competing factions who were only united by a shared hatred of the previous regime; the reality that any society must place some restrictions on individual liberties, and one freshly cut off from the interstellar economy even more so; the compromises with unsavoury and untrustworthy allies. This has the advantage that a period of revolutionary turmoil is one time when people absolutely will shout slogans at each other and speechify about ideological differences, which is handy, because I don't know Sitterson's other work (though I vaguely recall political controversy leading to the cancellation of a miniseries that integrated GI Joe and MASK, and if that sentence doesn't convince you this is the stupidest timeline, I don't know what will), but here at least he seems very big on that. There are also datacards, seemingly written by a future historian, which add to the feeling that you're getting your money's worth – this is not one of those modern comics which only take a couple of minutes per issue – but also to a sense of stodginess, because they seem to be by a historian who could really have used an editor, so there's lots of stuff like "As ever, even the most righteous conflicts become inevitably marred by the euphemistically described collateral damage." Put it this way: I recently read an actual history book about a revolution (Ruth Scurr's excellent Fatal Purity, apt since Lutheria borrows the French revolutionary calendar*), and I finished that with more sense of the players as people than I did this action-adventure comic, where they mostly go through fairly rote conflicts of the duty versus passion type. It probably doesn't help that, while Dougherty's art is great fun on stuff like diagrams of spaceships and mining settlements, and one dogfight in particular has an ingenious, vertiginous spiralling layout, the people can end up looking like escapees from the Christine Spar era of Grendel. And there's a general failure to fully convey the bigger picture; I was very rarely clear when we'd entered a flashback, and key details like the balance of power between the capitalist Alliance and the 40K knock-off Empire remained opaque. Fundamentally, I was reminded of two things: Deniz Camp's comics, so engaged with the big geopolitical issues, but so clumsy at expressing that as living, breathing drama; and Abnett and Winslade's Lawless, which has an incredibly similar bag of tricks to Free Planet, right down to the uncertain status of droids and the involvement of enigmatic aliens, but where you can never for a moment doubt the plausible humanity (or ape/alien/robot equivalent) of the protagonists and even of their foes.

*If you don't use this, and the ten-hour clock, you don't really use the metric system, so you don't get to complain about my sticking with Fahrenheit.

(Netgalley ARC)

I approached this graphic novel with an open mind and gave it a fair opportunity. However, it did not quite meet my expectations. The first issue contained substantial setup and exposition, which affected its engagement for me. As an avid graphic novel reader, I found it challenging to connect with the story initially. I appreciated the art style and noted that the premise was reminiscent of titles like Firefly and Invincible. That said, there was a considerable amount of information dumping. Additionally, some of the text boxes featured dark backgrounds with dark lettering, which made them difficult to read. Using white or lighter-colored text would improve readability. Overall, it was not a perfect fit for me.

This was…fine? This volume tried to cover quite a lot in a small amount of space and time, and I think that does a disservice to it. I did enjoy the artwork.

This graphic novel is … a lot. If you’re familiar with classic sci fi and Warhammer 40k, you’ll probably have an easier time as space marines and a mechanical religion, aliens who see time differently, chaotic civilian governments, space pirates, space stations, the rare and near magical orichaleum mineral that can do almost anything and is super-duper valuable, along with intelligent AI, cyborgs, evil corporations .and so much more are all tangled together in this volume.

And it is a tangle.

The main story is that of a planet that has broken free of the corporations that owned it through bloody resistance and now have to try to feed their people, lead their people and protect their people while holding onto the ideals and morals of heroes. They want to be the voice of the people while commanding them, to give everyone freedom while taking their land away for the good of the planet, to not be a military state while using their military to do everything, and have rested all of this on the shoulders of a dozen or so characters.

And these characters are given backstories, side stories, adventures and entanglements … and it’s a lot. You’re thrown into the deep end with no shore in sight and expected not just to swim, but to swim for miles and miles while holding on to fragile narrative threads that shift focus from one character to the next with no warning, and there are so many threads.

This volume is almost entirely world building with some scant moments for character growth as all the stress begins to fracture the careful alliances. And if that’s not what you’re into, stories of failure and flailing and people trying their best while realizing that the old systems that have held power did so for a reason … because they were convenient and effective even if they were neither good nor right; if you’re not into the grim reality that surviving a rebellion, winning one, doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods as you now have an entire planet to take care of — and more enemies than you can count.

I admire how much the author is trying to do, but I was a little overwhelmed with the constant info dumping. The artist does an amazing job of bringing the world to life, filled with bright colors and patterns to keep it from being grey and grim, and I think they managed the action very well. But the pace is frantic and I found myself having to take breaks just to keep from skimming. That said, there are ideas here that I did like, even if many of them are drawn from very familiar sources.

I think, for the right audience, this book will be a lot of fun. To find all the inspirations, all the easter eggs — so to speak — and I hope it finds that audience because I think it deserves it.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC.

Arc from netgalley. A gobbledygook pick and mix of science fiction tropes. I really enjoyed his history of wrestling, making this more disappointing.