The Expanse #1 (Corinna Sara Bechko and James S. A. Corey)

The Expanse #1
The Expanse series, Issue 1
Corinna Sara Bechko and James S. A. Corey, illustrations by Alejandro Aragon
BOOM! Studios
Fiction, Graphic Novel/Media Tie-In/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Mars is dying. With the opening of the ring gates and the thousand habitable worlds beyond rendering the terraforming of an airless red rock quaintly obsolete, not to mention the collapse of the old rivalry with Earth that fueled their mighty military industry, the pillars of the Martian economy and society are in freefall... and someone is taking advantage of the chaos. Ex-Marine Bobbie Draper stumbled into Mars's underworld and discovered a greater conspiracy. With off-the-books backing from Chrisjen Avasarala, a fading political force on Earth (now essentially exiled to Luna by the new secretary general), Bobbie plucks at threads hoping to find the center of the web - but that web may spread as far as Earth, and beyond, and for once Avasarala may have found an enemy even craftier than herself.
This series takes place between Seasons 4 and 5 of the Amazon Prime series The Expanse, based on the books by James S. A. Corey.

REVIEW: Filling in some backstory of events between the two seasons, this story follows Bobbie Draper's efforts to find out who is behind the growing web of corruption and Mars's burgeoning black market in military surplus, and Chrisjen Avasarala's efforts to both help Bobbie and keep her own head above increasingly murky and turbulent water in Earth's politics, as she realizes there's something not right on Luna. The two make a decent, if outwardly mismatched, team, both driven and dedicated and somewhat neglectful of personal and family lives in pursuit of greater justice... and both willing to bend a few rules to get what they need. It almost lost a half-mark for being so short (I prefer reading these things as single volumes once all issues are out, because it feels more like a finished story in a volume) and for the art sometimes being a bit sketchy. Still, it does what it sets out to do, creating a story and capturing the essence of the characters I recognize, so I cut it a little slack given that it's just the first installment of a four-issue arc.

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