It seems to be primarily meant as a showcase for Rubín's art, or maybe a really weird love-letter to Jack Kirby designs. The actual plot would not lead most readers to a positive view towards the characters drawn in Kirby Style, confusingly: yet another example of my overall theory that a lot of comics-readers, especially the ones mostly circulating in the superhero world, aren't particularly interested in words and stories and nuance in the first place.
It is set in a stylized universe, maybe near-future or maybe alternate present: the usual tech that looks really cool on the page, though we never get a sense of how it's different from our world, or how it really works in practice. Our main character is an unnamed agent of a mysterious, presumably government, agency, who tracks activity of the ████. (They're later called "gods;" these are the Kirby Karacters.)
For a long time, we don't know who the ████ are or what they have to do with anything, but they are clearly A Big Deal and related to the underlying tech/magic/weirdness of this world.
The hero starts off at a murder scene: someone has killed a ████, which he (and his on-site contact) had previously thought was impossible. He goes to his agency's secret headquarters (accessed via the fleshy trunk of his '50s-style car) and chats with the usual bald-headed short sciency type, Dr, Ibbit, who is performing the autopsy. The murder weapon is appropriately cosmic. Our hero then goes off to talk to his bosses, a shadowy board who look vaguely like Swamp Things with glowing eyes, where he learns the usual Shocking Facts.
They're the expected Shocking Facts: ████ have been killed before, and a well-known predecessor (Holden Humphries) of our hero investigated one such murder, just before his own shocking disappearance, three years ago. The hero blusters and demands; the board is cold and steely - it's the scene you've seen a million times. He's given the usual ultimatum: solve the case in a week, or lose everything. So he goes home to the cliché suburban wife and two small adorable kids for the inevitable domestic scene.
There's more everything-you-know-is-wrong from that point, with a Shocking Character visiting the hero - well, it might be shocking if we had any idea how this world was supposed to work, but we don't, so it's just the next thing that happens. The hero goes off to chase a woman who was seen recently with the dead ████, which of course leads to Big Revelations.
The creators present those Big Revelations - the history of the ████ - entirely visually, on big spreads full of Kirby stuff - so they are neat looking and awesome but don't really tell us what any of it means. I think we're supposed to think the ████ are Wicked Kewl, but their function in the story is to be alien overlords who will, inevitably, destroy humanity and all of its works - so it is difficult to believe that readers will be on their side.
And it all ends with a dying fall: nothing human will survive contact with the ████, oh well. Good job, detective: you now know the deep nihilistic secret of your world!
Again, this all declares that it's mean to be celebrating Kirby-ism. But the Kirby elements here are specifically an outside force, inevitably destroying all of humanity, and casually cruel and unpleasant. I have no idea why Lemire and Kindt think any of that would be positive in any conceivable universe.
To enjoy Cosmic Detective, dive deeply into the gorgeous Rubín pages, and try not to think at all about any implications of the story. If you can entirely forget character names and relationships, you're on the right path.
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