Planet Paradise
Jesse Lonergan
Image Comics
Fiction, Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Eunice's trip to Planet Paradise, a world of rest and relaxation, turns into a nightmare when the ship crash-lands on a hellhole infested with carnivorous lizard beasts. As the only vacationer to awaken from the trip's stasis pods, it falls to her to help the injured (and drug-addled) captain as they await rescue... assuming the corporation can be bothered.
REVIEW: The premise had plenty of promise, and it starts out on a decent note, presenting a world where space travel is so routine that bureaucracy's jaded, cynical shadow has fallen over everything. Rescue pilots delay their mission so they can see the end of the cheap melodrama they're watching on the shipboard computer, and they're only dispatched after HQ belatedly decides the red light alarm of a trip gone wrong is worth getting up from a chair to answer. Only Eunice seems to have some lingering sense of adventure and optimism, which is the only way anyone ultimately survives... but it's a bit of a bait-and-switch to make it sound like she has many adventures and the captain is constantly dragging her down. The captain spends most of the time drugged up on pain meds (which she doesn't just take when she's injured) and complaining. When they finally do leave, Eunice's visit to Planet Paradise with her also-jaded husband Peter shows how the trip has changed her, or rather revealed who she really is... but the change feels muted, blunted by everyone else's utter lack of interest in anything (save when they're actively trying to convince her, too, to not care or push or do - despite being a far-future interplanetary culture, apparently wives are still supposed to sit around the hotel getting massages while husbands golf and drink beer), and by the end she seems to have acquired a touch of that, herself. It left a disappointing taste in my mouth.
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