So maybe it's a companion piece, or another element in an era in Jesse Lonergan's career. I liked both books a lot, so I'm hoping something like the latter: I'd be happy to see him do SF books like this for a while, if he and the market agree.
(Although...they're both from four years ago, and I suspect the market has not agreed, since the comics market has been deeply disagreeable for close to a decade now.)
But let me get more specific about Planet Paradise, a roughly hundred-page standalone SF graphic novel. It's the story of a vacation that goes wrong.
Eunice and Peter live in some medium-future multi-system society, seemingly a pretty rich and healthy and happy one. They're off for a vacation on Rydra-17, billed as "the Paradise Planet." The book opens with them individually settling into their hibernation pods, which will then be slotted into bays in the ship.
This isn't a fast-FTL universe; it takes more than eleven days in transit to go from wherever-we-started to Rydra-17. The two crewmembers of this unnamed ship are the only ones awake for the journey.
There's a cliché that says a story is about what happens when something goes wrong: that's the case here. There's some kind of malfunction. The ship ends up crash-landing on some unknown world. One of the crewmembers is killed; the pods are scattered across the landscape and some of them have failed or broken, killing their inhabitants.
Eunice's pod is intact, but it pops open. We don't know why. But there she is: unexpectedly on an alien world, in the middle of a disaster scene, the only human on the surface.
Well, not quite the only one. The captain of the ship, Wanda, also survived: she's got a broken leg and is deep in the wreckage. Wanda yells for help, and Eunice saves her. So then the two of them can work to save the rest and call for rescue.
It's not that simple: Wanda is demanding and injured and obnoxious and treats Eunice as just the hands to do the things she wants done. Eunice is overwhelmed and untrained and unsure. And there are unexpected large carnivores on this planet.
They do manage to find a distress beacon and set it up. An emergency service agent arrives a few days later - again, travel between planets in this universe is at least several days. That does not go exactly as planned, either.
But Eunice and Wanda do get off this planet. Eunice does finally get to Rydra-17, and her vacation with Peter. But, as we see in the last scene, her experience has changed her - unexpectedly, making her more confident and able in another dangerous situation.
Lonergan's panels here aren't quite as visually inventive as the wordless Hedra, but he plays with size and sequence and format a lot - there are some excellent big vertical panels near the beginning to emphasize the solidity of the ship and the old-fashioned lying-back take-off position, among other fun sequences - and his art is dynamic, great at both quiet storytelling and the more energetic action moments.
He also makes his world lived-in and specific; his characters consume soap-opera-ish media and grumble to each other about corporate budget cuts. This seems to be a pretty nice universe, all-in-all, but it's not perfect, and the imperfections led to this story - we can imagine those same budget cuts caused a little slacking off of maintenance that caused the original malfunction.
This is not a big story: it has a small cast, a short time-frame, and a modest scope. But it's strongly focused, has a great relatable main character in Eunice, looks lovely, and does everything it needs to do smartly, quickly, and with great style. It is a neat SF graphic novel, totally enjoyable and self-contained, and I would be happy if the world had many more books like that.
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