John
Carpenter's Tales Of Science Fiction: Vault #1-3
(Storm King, cover dates July- September, 2017)
Writer:
James Ninness (series created by John Carpenter and Sandy King)
Artist:
Andres Esparza
Colorist:
Sergio Martinez
John
Carpenter's latest comic book creation is an ongoing science fiction
series, albeit with a Horror bent a la The Thing. While it is
easy to pass this series off as an Alien meets The Thing
riff, one would be missing the point and the punchline of this series
if they did that. While the aforementioned movies are certainly
reference points here they are not what this series is all about.
I
try not to spoil books when I review them or give blow by blow book
report style reviews. I'll try to touch on a few points and let you
decide if it's something you might like. The crew of the Gaia are
your standard rag tag bunch seen in these types of movies, with the
dynamics of distrust and politics that you would find in any group of
people. The Gaia encounters an unknown ship and decides to board it.
We've all seen this before and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to
figure out that something is wrong from the word go.
With
the recent discovery of a new black hole so close to our solar
system, this series was better timed than even the creators could
have hoped for. Black holes are a huge mystery that we are only
scratching the surface of understanding. It's here that we have the
springboard for the Vault series. I'm not giving away anything
else other than we are not alone and it's only a matter of time
before unforeseen circumstances lead to unintended consequences for
mankind.
I've
read these three issues as they came out and again once the series
was completed, and it works better as a whole story than as
individual parts. Some comics series are like that. While I primarily
read collected editions I do buy all Storm King stuff in singles
first. At three issues I can't imagine this being collected as a
stand alone book. It will likely be compiled with one of the other
Tales Of Science Fiction series down the road. The next one is
Vortex and issue 1 is out now.
Junk
Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5.
