'Zakk Ridley is just your average smuggler and rogue until he and his robotic partner, Dan, get caught up in an intergalactic conspiracy. Zakk dreams of an easy life roaming the galaxy and making a fast buck or two, but as they say, in space no one can hear you dream..'
With the upcoming release of the new volume of The Intergalactic Adventures of Zakk Ridley just around the corner now might be the best time to check out the original four issue run, collected together in one graphic novel.
The story follows the grouchy and disagreeable space pirate Zakk Ridley, and his robot companion Dan, as they end up in trouble following a transport job that turns out to be more than they first realised. Barely escaping from the police, and taking damage to their ship, The Mary Jane, they head to an old friend to help get them back up to working order.
However, when it comes to payment their old friend simply asks for them to make a pick up for them. Forgoing having to pay for their repairs with a simple transport job can't be too bad right? Unfortunately for Zakk and Dan, they're not transporting cargo, but a woman with information that could prove the galactic president is behind a fanatical group of killers, using the chaos they've been causing to further his own goals. All Zakk wants to do is live a quiet life, but now it seems like he's being dragged into a conspiracy that could make him a target too.
The Intergalactic Adventures of Zakk Ridley is an odd book. In a lot of ways it has many of the trappings of American science fiction. The introduction to the book makes comparisons to Zakk and other popular space pirates, such as Mal Reynolds and Han Solo, and the book does at times feel like a story that's been inspired by these other works; but it's also a very British feeling book too. There are lines in the story that feel very much like they've come from a British writer, and it has a feel that you don't really get with American work.
This was only enhanced for me thanks to the artwork from Ewan McLaughlin. McLaughlin, who has also worked on the comic series Gun Viking, which has a very 2000AD feel to it. I don't think I could point to one particular artist that his style reminds me of, but the way that it's been coloured, the exagerated and sometimes ugly features of people, and the blocky, boxy quality of the vehicles and environments just scream British comics to me.
The art and the writing seem to be made for each other, and they go well together, often with the art doing as much world building as the text, thanks in part to the amount of detail that's gone into each panel and the tiny things in the background that help this to feel like a lived in and worn world.
Writing for the book falls to Ian Sharman and Pete Rogers, and whilst I've read some of Sharman's work in the past I'm not familiar with Rogers at all. That being said, you'd be hard pressed to try and tell that there are two writers on the book. Sometimes with comics that have more than one writer the split can be quite obvious, with some scenes shifting so drastically in quality it's clear they've been done by different people; but that's not the case here.
The two writers seem to work well together, and the world they created feels really interesting. I often wanted the story to slow down for a bit, just so that I could spend longer getting to know more about everything. I wanted to know about the strange worlds the heroes were travelling to, and the odd cultures that were being depicted. I'd have happily read a book that was a few issues longer to get this, even if it meant a bit of padding; that's how interesting some of the tiny background elements were.
It's obvious that the people working on this book have a love for British comics, for science fiction, and for Star Wars (there's a surprising number of Star Wars references scattered throughout the book, so see how many you can spot). It seems to be a book made through a passion and love of the genre and the craft, and sets the stage for more things to come in the next volume.
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