'Salvage vessel Cortes tracks the Lonely Orphan, a planet with no star system to call its own. Somewhere on this hostile rock is a payload fit for a king. To attain it, though, the crew of the Cortes must brave razor rock, poisonous vapours, treacherous footing, and… the most mind-numbing horrors imaginable. Struggling to stay alive, they are beset at every turn by horrors from their own nightmares. Now, they have discovered that they are not alone on the planet, and the other inhabitants welcome them… as sacrifices to an elder god.
'Stranded on a vicious, murderous, seemingly intelligent planet, the crew of the Cortes must reevaluate what it truly means to survive, and what they are willing to do in order to spare their own lives.'
The cover of Rogue Planet sets a tone pretty quickly with this book, it's one that is going to freak you out a little, and is definitely not one for the faint of heart.
The book starts on this lone rogue planet, where a race of alien beings are worshipping before a giant monument made from flesh and bone, a living, writhing monolith. A father reassures his son not to be afraid, before slitting his throat before this mass of flesh and organs. This first scene makes it clear that this is a book that will go to uncomfortable places, will push the readers to the point were you kind of want to put the book down because of how disturbing it gets at time, yet there is this central mystery as to what's happening that's raised in these first few pages that drives you on.
After this the focus shifts to the crew of the salvage vessel Cortes, who have discovered this rogue world thanks to a distress beacon from a crashed ship. Thinking that there might be some valuable salvage, the crew sets down on this strange new world and several members set out to go find the source of the transmission. However, the crew discover horrible creatures made from mangled flesh, and dozens of crashed ships, their former crews now part of the horrific creatures that seem to be stalking them across the planet.
Rogue Planet feels like a mashup of The Thing and Event Horizon and that's not a bad thing as I love both of those movies. I've seen some other people make the comparison to Alien, but other than being drawn to a planet because of a signal there's not much here like that film, and being drawn to an unknown place by a signal is not something that's unique to Alien by any means.
Instead of being beset by alien lifeforms the crew of the Cortes have to contend with disturbing body horror and their fellow crew members are twisted and transformed into awful abominations, or they have to deal with their own nightmares coming to life in front of them. This second part is the one that interests me the most, and its actually set up a lot earlier in the book than you think, with hints at what's really going on being given thanks to the appearance of snow on board the vessel. I'd have liked to have seen this gone into in more detail, however, as the idea of these people having to confront the manifestation of their fears was an interesting prospect. Sadly, the story moves at quite a fast pace, so we don't really get much time to go into things in any great detail.
Whilst this fast pace is great for keeping the pressure on the Cortes crew as they try desperately to get off planet, it does mean that the readers don't really get much time to get to know these people before something awful happens to them. There is a little bit of character development here and there, there's one crew member who recites a list of all the women he's slept with when he's afraid, and another who has a husband left on earth who's going into suspended animation whilst they're away so that they can age at the same rate, but despite these little nuggets of character I still didn't feel like I really knew any of them; and couldn't name a single member of the crew for you now. This is my biggest gripe with the book, as everything else was great. I can't help but feel that perhaps the book would have benefited from another issue or two, just so that Bunn could have had more room to fit in some of these character moments and flesh out the crew.
The art on the book, provided by Andy MacDonald and Nick Filardi, looks great, and they manage to make the book feel of decent quality, thanks in large part to the level of detail they give things. I've seen horror comics that have tried to hide things in shadow, or left some panels mostly empty voids, and whilst this can sometimes work it does at times feel a little cheap and lazy; here, however, the book never scrips on on the art, and every panel feels like there's something there for you to spend time looking through, whether that's the interior of the Cortes or the alien planet itself.
Rogue Planet isn't perfect, but its pretty damn good, and one of the few horror comics that I've read recently that has actually felt scary in places.
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