Shrapnel: Aristeia Rising 4

Comic Book Reviews: Shrapnel: Aristeia Rising 4

posted on March 30th, 2009 in Reviews

Comic Book Reviews: Shrapnel: Aristeia Rising #4 of 5
Created by Mark Long & Nick Sagan
Written by M. Zachary Sherman
Illustrated by Bagus Hutomo & Leos “Okita” Ng
Published by Radical Publishing
Reviewed by Richard Caldwell

As this Shrapnel series draws nearer to the conclusion, the sci-fi action definitely heats up. Ex-Marine Samantha Vijaya finds herself in the leadership role over the now-hardened Venusian colonists in a final suicidal effort against the awesome might of the imposing Earth Alliance.
Plans are enacted and lives are lost, until allies from the Martian settlements jump in with their own agendas. Then things really get interesting.

The full scope and potential of this story is coming into play here, with allusions to what is going on in other parts of the galaxy, and additional hints at earlier struggles in the seemingly never-ending war for freedom. The fast paced violence and realistically grim dialogue present an excellent view of the harshness of survival, of the ever-looming death that is reaping a mother of a harvest amidst the mechanized battlesuit warfare and exploding orbital spaceships. As I said in a review for a previous issue, this is what a future war SHOULD look like, what it should FEEL like. The claustrophobia of impossible odds, well portrayed.

The art, digitally painted as such, has grown as the series progresses. The storytelling is better defined, the POV more clear and resolute. Some of these pages are just plain beautiful. There is a wonderful pedigree of imagination and vision employed here.

Shrapnel: Aristeia Rising may be concluding soon enough, but Vijaya’s war is just beginning, and I honestly look forward to further tales of this bleak but hopeful futuristic narrative. Radical is getting it right.