Space Bastards #9

Space Bastards #9

Humanoids 2021

Written by Eric Peterson & Joe Aubrey

Illustrated by Darick Robertson

Coloured by Pete Pantazis

Lettered by Taylor Esposito

In the future, unemployment and job dissatisfaction are sky-high. When you've got nothing left to lose, you join the Intergalactic Postal Service (IPS). Its postal fees are steep—and they go only to whomever ultimately fulfils the delivery, making every run a comically violent free-for-all between the most ruthless mercenaries in the cosmos! The interplanetary ensemble cast of Space Bastards, under the volatile leadership of Postmaster General Roy Sharpton, are constantly at each other’s throats trying to settle scores and earn big money. But when a rival corporation's teleportation technology threatens to make their role in the galaxy obsolete, the Bastards must work together to preserve a job they've come to love.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve reviewed this series and thought it was well past time to shine a spotlight on this series again. It’s pretty much everything you could possibly hope it would be with the wanton violence and the myriad of species and characters that we see throughout, whether they are featured or just there. It is an extremely fun, interesting and off the wall, outside the box kind of story that the market and audiences really need and deserve to have.

I’m a huge fanboy of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a magnificent job in fleshing out their evolving personalities. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story the more we want to see, we really don't want the story to end.

I am thoroughly enjoying the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I’m also liking the way that the layers within the story open up new avenues to be explored. Whether these avenues are going to be explored or not isn’t relevant as they all add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward are impeccably handled.

The interiors here are mindbogglingly brilliant! Darick is in rare form and the linework is utterly bloody phenomenal and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality in the attention to detail what we see throughout is mind blowing. How we see backgrounds being utilised throughout are stunning in how we see them enhance and expand the moments, which makes me wish they were in every panel. They also work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a masters eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows such a stellar understanding for how colour works.

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The writing is utterly bloody spectacular and the characterisation is brilliant, Zordakk for instance, and along with these mindbogglingly brilliant interiors bring this story to life perfectly. I love that this sets things up for the next chapter in The Postal Services’ incarnation and I am eagerly awaiting the next issue to see how well this goes. So if you want some genuine gut busting laugh out loud irreverent fun then you should most assuredly be reading this!