Like Half Past Danger, Wild Blue Yonder goes back in time to try and capture the days of the movie serial adventure and they do. The story by Mike Raicht, Zach Howard and Austin Harrison takes place in a world dying from radiation and pollution. To survive the population built giant flying aircraft’s but only for a few of the chosen few. The rest of population work in mines below supplying energy for those in the skies. But all is not perfect in the skies above and those that live there fight brutal wars to survive and only the fittest survive.
The idea of people living in the sky is not a original idea. I have seen a few Japanese anime movies that use the same premise. There is a blend of different concepts here, steam punk, The Rocketeer, WW2 and sci fi, and it works. Mike Raicht, Zach Howard and Austin Harrison have crafted a interesting story and the first book speeds along like a Indiana Jones film, Your main charcters are introduce quickly, Cola the female hot shot pilot and her newly re crewed gunner Tug and then BAM, the action starts.
The art work by Zach Howard is great and detailed. There is a heavy emphasis on color brown in this book but it gives it a feel of a old pulp fiction book with a hint of red here and there. The full page panels on pages 12 and 13 shows great action with planes fighting and jet pack combatants going to town on each other.
I could go into deeper detail of the story but then you don’t need to read the book and I think you should pick this one up. So in short my fellow Poppers I give Wild Blue Yonder 4 fighter planes out of 5.
Oh on a side note, Wild Blue Yonder #1 however sold out before it hit the shelves, all 12,327 printed copies pre-allocated and a great launch for the title as reported on Bleeding Cool site. I also have to mention that Like Half Past Danger is going to it second printing.
Remember comics are to be enjoyed, not destroyed.
LLAP/POBS
