Comic Review: SOUTHERN CROSS

SOUTHERN CROSS #1

Writer: Becky Cloonan
Artist: Andrew Belanger
Colorist: Lee Loughridge

Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3

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I have such a mixed relationship with sci-fi horror. I didn’t grow up with the beloved cultural touchstones of the genre (Alien, The Thing, The Fly) so my perception of it in pop culture, for the longest time, belonged to the world of B-movies and Silver Age horror comics featuring radioactive animals and things from space. By the time I did discover that two worlds I was so fervently passionate about could work together to amplify each other, I had plumbed the depths of both and consequently had the bar raised much higher. Not that the aforementioned properties didn’t pass muster but the less said about the turds that have followed since then, the better. As actual space-bound horror goes, the only one of recent note is Sunshine. Southern Cross is, if anything, a throwback to Alien and even further back to the classic, if slightly obscure, sci-fi thriller Solaris. As author and artist have noted in interviews, Southern Cross definitely falls squarely into the “haunted space ship” category that Solaris essentially birthed, but as I said earlier, it also shares DNA with Alien and its iconic protagonist Ripley as well. But, oddly, none of these things are what comes to mind when I read Southern Cross.

This is largely due to the writing of Becky Cloonan. The first issue of Southern Cross focuses intensely on protagonist Alex Braith, a troubled yet determined woman looking for answers. What Cloonan does is confront her with a barrage of people who are as faceted as her but can’t be welcomed into her private struggle and, for most of the issue, Cloonan keeps her readers from picking sides. Her immediate response to an ideal roommate establishes her guarded attitude without being gross, with her internal dialogue creeping towards melodramatic angst but never quite tipping over, thanks to the eloquence of Alex’s desperation. It’s highlighted in the back of the book but the line “Somebody just kill me already and bury me with Amber on Titan. We can haunt that icy moon together” is a fantastic centerpiece that is basically a microcosm of the entire issue. Sure, the angst is pained but there’s a haunted, almost elegant note to it, and in small ways, the world around her is feeding that ennui. Like the mystery of her sister’s death, it’s hard to parse out what is in her head and what is really wrong around her. By immersing us in her fractured emotional state, Cloonan catches her readers of guard when she assaults them, only twice, with the surreal, nightmarish consequences of her obsession. There’s definitely a lot of influence taken from the psychological thrillers of the seventies, including the likes of Polanski’s Repulsion and De Palma’s Carrie.

Cloonan’s story isn’t an inherently sci-fi one, so selling that aspect falls in the incredibly capable hands of artists Andrew Belanger and Lee Loughridge. I absolutely have to credit Loughridge alongside Belanger because the colors are really one of the biggest, most expressive things in a book that would seem a bit muted otherwise. From page one’s pink sphere shield to intoxicating yellows and pinks of the gravity drive, Loughridge imbues each page with lush, subtle strokes of gray-washed greens, blues and oranges but punctuates them, like the inflection of speech, with stronger tones, like the glowing blue of the ship entering warp or the loud red triangle enclosing Alex during a dream-like panel. But Andy’s art is the foundation of all this and it’s astonishing how he pulls and pushes the reader along, deftly heaving the narrative with potent layout dynamics and vertigo-inducing zooms that never quite interrupt the flow, bubbling just beneath the reader’s awareness. There’s a hugely cinematic feel to some of the panels but picking out where Andrew is coming from would be impossible; a page that slides from the massive space cruiser jutting into bleak nothingness to an extreme closeup of Alex’s eye reflecting it back; there’s some Blade Runner there but it could easily be a riff on 2001: A Space Odyssey as well. Any sci-fi fan should go properly nuts over how nuanced and lovingly Belanger embraces the sci-fi setting when the story isn’t focusing on character development. Letterer Serge LaPointe coats this with a sheen of futurism, opting for an angular bubble style for all the dialogue as well as bold, ornate bubbles for computerized vox. Interestingly, he hands off the SFX to Andrew and he manages it well, though it does blend in a bit as a result. Still, when LaPointe is called on to evoke the low-end, chest-rattling bass thrum of the gravity drive, he delivers with a unique, unfilled font that screams “sci-fi” SFX.

This is just the first issue of Southern Cross and we’re off to one of the best starts of any sci-fi horror comic I’ve ever read. The horror is a creeping presence, definitely fixing this closer to the thriller category for the moment, but the last page provides an awesome, genuinely hair-raising climax hinting at more spectral dread to come. Cloonan and Belanger, as well as Loughridge and LaPointe, are absolutely firing on all cylinders. At this point, it’s almost laughable how often Image delivers great titles, particularly at reasonable prices not found anywhere else in the comics industry, but I’ll wholeheartedly recommend this because anyone who enjoys scary stuff, sci-fi stuff, or just really good looking comics needs to have this.