Sea of Stars, Vol. 1: Lost in the Wild Heavens

Sea of Stars (collected editions) #1

by Jason Aaron, Dennis Hopeless, Stephen Green (Illustrator)

Being a space-trucker sounds like a cool job, but the reality is can be boring as hell. So when recently-widowed Gil gets a long-haul gig across the universe, he figures it's safe enough to bring his young son Kadyn along for the ride - that is until their 'big rig' gets bitten in half by a gigantic Space Leviathan! Now separated from his young son - with a breached suit that's venting oxygen at an alarming rate - Gil must defy the odds and stay alive long enough to rescue Kadyn.

Meanwhile, Kadyn seems to be getting all the help he needs from a talking Space Monkey riding a Space Dolphin... or maybe it's the strange powers he's suddenly manifesting?

From the writing duo of Jason Aaron (Southern Bastards, Thor) and Dennis Hopeless (Cloak & Dagger, Vader: Dark Visions), with dazzling art by Stephen Green (Hellboy & the BPRD) and cosmic colors by Rico Renzi (SpiderGwen) comes a brand-new science fiction series, with all the scope and heart of the The Never Ending Story crossed with imaginative weirdness of Miyazaki - an intense, galaxy-spanning adventure that's suitable for fans of all ages!

Collects Sea of Stars #1-5.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Fantasy, Fiction, Adventure

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2020

About the author

Jason Aaron grew up in a small town in Alabama. His cousin, Gustav Hasford, who wrote the semi-autobiographical novel The Short-Timers, on which the feature film Full Metal Jacket was based, was a large influence on Aaron. Aaron decided he wanted to write comics as a child, and though his father was skeptical when Aaron informed him of this aspiration, his mother took Aaron to drug stores, where he would purchase books from spinner racks, some of which he still owns today.

Aaron's career in comics began in 2001 when he won a Marvel Comics talent search contest with an eight-page Wolverine back-up story script. The story, which was published in Wolverine #175 (June 2002), gave him the opportunity to pitch subsequent ideas to editors.

In 2006, Aaron made a blind submission to DC/Vertigo, who published his first major work, the Vietnam War story The Other Side which was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Miniseries, and which Aaron regards as the "second time" he broke into the industry.

Following this, Vertigo asked him to pitch other ideas, which led to the series Scalped, a creator-owned series set on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation and published by DC/Vertigo.

In 2007, Aaron wrote Ripclaw: Pilot Season for Top Cow Productions. Later that year, Marvel editor Axel Alonso, who was impressed by The Other Side and Scalped, hired Aaron to write issues of Wolverine, Black Panther and eventually, an extended run on Ghost Rider that began in April 2008. His continued work on Black Panther also included a tie-in to the company-wide crossover storyline along with a "Secret Invasion" with David Lapham in 2009.

In January 2008, he signed an exclusive contract with Marvel, though it would not affect his work on Scalped. Later that July, he wrote the Penguin issue of The Joker's Asylum.

After a 4-issue stint on Wolverine in 2007, Aaron returned to the character with the ongoing series Wolverine: Weapon X, launched to coincide with the feature film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Aaron commented, "With Wolverine: Weapon X we'll be trying to mix things up like that from arc to arc, so the first arc is a typical sort of black ops story but the second arc will jump right into the middle of a completely different genre," In 2010, the series was relaunched once again as simply Wolverine. He followed this with his current run on Thor: God of Thunder.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finding Nemo in space. A space trucker and his son are separated across the vastness of space, yet through coincidence meet up again within five issues. Given the writers involved this was missing something. It kind of felt like a rushed first draft so they could get it out there to be optioned for a movie. Both Aaron and Hallum have written far better comics separately.

The art lost me in places. I liked Rico Renzi's choice of color pallette but it sometimes obscured what was happening on the page.

Received a review copy from Image and Edelweiss. All thoughts are my own and in no way influenced by the aforementioned.

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting idea - a father and his son separated by the immense expanse of space.

Could be real nailbiting stuff, showing the father's desperate attempts to reach his son, or his son increasingly getting more and more afraid, while danger is closing in on him.

There's some of that in the dad's story, I suppose, although the plot seems mostly dependent on coincidence. The kid behaves like only a comic book kid would, so we basically get Space Jungle Book (which sounds cooler than what we get here).

When we get to issue 5, it feels like we should've had that as issue 2 or 3.

2.5 stars

(Read as five single issues)

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

A stupid space fantasy about a father and son trying to survive after their spacecraft is destroyed and they are separated. The boy thinks he is an orphan, but shakes it off pretty quickly when he realizes he gained super powers during the accident and falls in with a snarky group of new "friends" who would all kill him if not for his powers. The father fights desperately against a variety of deadly threats as he scrabbles after his son's trail.

There is a poor parody of the Aztecs -- unimaginatively called the Zzazteks -- interested in the boy's power and ready to kill everyone else in their way. And space is filled with all sorts of monsters that don't need to breathe, but just swim around in it like fish, because why not?

I was interested in the book when I saw Jason Aaron's name on the cover, but he's only half of the writing team and nothing on the pages grabbed me at all. Dull and dumb.

[James DeSantis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aaron is back to his indie work and takes a huge swing to give us a sci-fi coming of age, finding memo, story.

Too bad it mostly strikes out.

The story is almost exactly finding memo in terms of structure. Father and son are together, mother dies, father then loses son after being seperated from son. Son starts to become his own man, becoming stronger with the help of friends, all while his father searches for him through the hardships of survival.

Well finding Memo is great James, what's the issue?

It doesn't have characters worth caring for. Both father and son are kind of boring. The son is least fun and his "powers" is pretty cool. But the rest? Blah. The father is typical "I need my son" but you never feel the gravity of the situation. I also didn't think the art worked all that well, besides a few cool designs, it was typical in space fare.

Overall, a big old skip. Not horrible, but doubt I'll check out volume 2. A 2 out of 5.

[Ignacio · Rating 1 out of 5]

¿Pero qué es esto?

A ver, es encomiable el intento de acercarse a lo juvenil desde una historia de cf en el cruce entre Perdidos en el espacio y Buscando a Nemo, con un padre y un hijo separados por un encuentro fortuito con una bestia sideral. Pero no sé yo si los guionistas han acertado con el dibujante, más apropiado para un tebeo de Vertigo de fantasía oscura o terror que uno de cf con criaturas parlantes y escenarios exóticos. Añádanle que la peripecia es tan liviana como plomiza (cuadran el círculo) y todo el rato alienta el recuerdo de los múltiples tebeos que hacen lo mismo mil veces mejor: Valerian y Dani Futuro, cosas de Frederik Peeters, Almóndigas del espacio... Incluso Sentient, de Lemire y Hernández Walta, me parece bastante, mucho, mejor tirado. No he pagado los 17 euros que cuesta el primer tomito así que no puedo sentirme engañado. Pero me costaría encontrar alguien a quien recomendárselo.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely pointless story that wants to be a Disney cartoon, with inexplicably added gore and cursing, and hideously muddled, incomprehensible art combine to make a total shitfest. One star for the Mike Mignola variant cover in the back of the book.

And not for nothing, especially since I have no intention of reading any further volumes, but books like this are why I've been shying away from new creator-owned series over the past few years. This was published three years ago, and nothing since. Jason Aaron has also abandoned his SOUTHERN BASTARDS series, which I absolutely loved, but now couldn't give two shits about since it's been years between volumes. Who the fuck can remember, or care, about what happened in the last issue?

[Jakub Kvíz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zajimalo by me, kolik toho pise Aaron a kolik Hallum (aka Hopeless), protoze Aaronova rukopisu je tam jak safranu.

Sea of Star sazi na ohranou premisu ovodoveleho typka, ktery se snazi najit cestu ke svemu synovi. Cely to na me pusobilo, ze uz sem ty napady nekde videl... Treba to, ze se mladej seznami s vesmirnou opici a delfinem, to sou Timon a Pumba z Lviho krale jak vysity...

Kresba neni zadna parada a zachranuje to aspon peknej coloring.

Dalsi pokracovani si necham ujit, tohle me nijak neoslovilo.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Individual issue reviews: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5

Total review score: 3.3

[Chantaal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could have be an interesting idea, but this essentially boils down to a very boring father searching for his son storyline. Also, this kid was INCREDIBLY annoying.

[Alex Sarll]

We open on a fabulous purple background, a psychedelic purple swirl of some distant galaxy. The caption: "Space...is so crapping boring."

Good start. Promising writers, too – Jason Aaron working with Dennis Hallum, and you can see why someone might want to drop the pen-name Hopeless, but doing it after you've already built quite a rep seems perverse. Alas, this series suffers from an endemic problem of Image books – perhaps looking to hook inattentive Hollywood money quick, they start the story too soon. Barely have we begun before we're into the action, upending a father-son space-trucking status quo we never got to know well enough to feel the disruption of its end. Impossibilities like a human kid breathing in space don't feel so impossible when we don't have a handle on the world as one where that doesn't happen, and other critters seem to be 'breathing space air' just fine. As for the dad who, despite everything, is still coming for his kid...that's just off-the-shelf motivation when we didn't spend long enough with the pair of them together to get any sense of their specific bond. Green's art and Renzi's colours are excellent, catching the broken-down tech and the cosmic strangeness both, but ultimately this can't escape the feeling of being an attempt to catch Saga's coat-tails, only replacing the romantic pairing at that story's heart with a parent-child one. Which, in any case, Saga already has too.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A boy and his father are separated when a giant space monster chomps down on the father's courier ship. Tumbling through the vastness of space with dwindling oxygen reserves, the father chases after his lost son. Imbued with the powers of a mysterious hammer, the son goes on a fun adventure with a space monkey and space dolphin.

Sea of Stars is simultaneously silly and emotional. It's also quite propulsive with characters you care about, even if you don't know much about them. The art is absolutely gorgeous. There's nothing too complex here, and that's definitely part of the charm.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Father and son are separated, and must find their way back to each other. Sounds familiar? Yeah, it is. But this one's in space!

Sea Of Stars has a lot of good ideas. It also has a lot going on at once, and doesn't seem to want to tell you about half of it, which makes it difficult to care. There's a lot of underlying mythology that would put some stuff in context, but unlike say, Monstress, where you can work it out if you try hard enough, Sea Of Stars feels more deliberately obtuse, like it's just not telling you things for convenience of plot.

The two disparate plotlines are also a bit skewed - the father's story is infinitely more compelling than the son's, especially since the son spends most of his fucking about and it's the space-animals he meets along the way that force his plot forward.

Stephen Green's art is nice, but a little hazy in places, like it's not quite finished, and he leaves it up to Spider-Gwen colourist Rico Renzi to fill in the blanks, with varying degrees of success.

Not a bad start, and I'll stick around, but definitely some teething problems.

[Valéria. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mňa tieto "rodič hľadá svoje stratené decko" príbehy bavia. Plus toto je naozaj milo napísané. Páči sa mi, ako sa striedali situácie, v ktorých sa vyskytol otec s tými, v ktorých sa vyskytol jeho stratený syn. A keď sa k tomu pridá vesmírna opica s vesmírnym delfínom, velké monštrá, roboti a (škoda že tak predvídateľná) vyhostená ženská postava, tak sa to naozaj príjemne číta. Dúfam, že to ale nebudú ťahať dosprosta, keby sa to uzavrie druhým paperbackom, bolo by to ideálne.

[Ryan Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

What in the star farts did I just read? A father and son get separated, the father looks for the son, who might be more special than he realizes. I think it boils down to that, but it’s also about space truckers, quippy space monkeys, flying dolphins, interstellar shamans and quarksharks.

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn it, I thought this was a completed series. It ends in a cliffhanger with no new issues in sight. This is why I don't read new stuff. I hate the wait. Otherwise, it's a great story about a father and son who get separated in the hostile environment that is space. The love of a father for his son proves to be no less strong than a mother's. I suspect feminists won't like this. There is also an Aztec-like tribe whose gods require sacrifice to be appeased and use magical artefacts of great power. The story takes place in a universe that isn't the desolate landscape we know space to be. It's populated by creatures large and small that can survive without oxygen and can navigate space as a fish does water.

Space trucker Gil Syarx is separated from his son Kadyn when his spaceship is cut in two by a space Leviathan. Gil is swallowed up by the creature as Kadyn flees. In reality Gil survives as well and goes looking for Kadyn who seems to have developed the ability to survive in space with no space suit.

With life support systems at critical levels, Gil makes for a close-by derelict ship. Thankfully, it has enough power left to reactivate. An encounter with Kyle the protector bot makes the ship fly through hyperspace by accident. After he crashlands, he must survive an attack from Zzastek hunters. He fights fiercely until the signal to his son's suit is lost. With no hope to find Kadyn, Gil is captured and taken to the Zzastek capital.

Kadyn enjoys his new-found abilities and tries to forget his past. He is found by Dalla the Despised, an exiled Zzastek who reveals that the boy has the power of the sun god Quasarro, likely from touching an artefact his father was transporting. In the hopes of being accepted back into the fold, Dalla invites him to return to her tribe. He accepts, though he is unaware that Dalla doesn't have his best interests at heart - she wants to retrieve the artefact even if it kills the boy.

Gil regains hope when he sees proof of his son's presence. The tribe's shaman intends to sacrifice Kadyn to retreive the artefact that merged with him and save the tribe from the devil god that intends to destroy them. Thankfully, Dalla opposes this at the last second. It's revealed that the shaman wanted the power for himself and that he worships the devil god who has just arrived at the camp.

[RG · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5*. Massive fan of Aarons but this was missing something

[Gabriell Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Příběh je jedna veliká vykrádačka politá kýblem klišé. Ale ty barvičky a ten vesmír mě moc baví. Tak moc, že jestli kouknete na obrázky a líbit se vám to nebude tak si jednu hvězdu dejte dolů.
Po přečtení jsem se několikrát musel podívat na obálku, že to fakt psal Aaron, protože to na něj moc nevypadá. Spíš mi až přijde, že jenom hodil nápady, ale psát to už nepsal. Anebo má nějaké divné období a do toho se rozhodl napsat něco pro děti vykradením jiných dětských příběhů. A nebo se teprve rozjede v dalším booku. A já to s ním budu zkoušet dál. Prozatím.

[Jenny Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fast paced with some pretty cool space scenes. The characters are just ok, we don't get much of a sense of them yet, but hopefully will later in the series. If you like space adventures, check it out.

[Neon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have stars in my eyes.

Fantastic graphic novel. The plot is original and the art is fresh and exciting.

I'm off to read the second book!

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5⭐️

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Literally a space version of Finding Nemo, a movie I disliked immensely. This is actually not even as interesting as that flick.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was pretty lazy and underwhelming. To give an example of how lazy: the main villains of the story are called Zzazteks. They are space Aztecs. Super creative.

Otherwise, this story is brought down by the fact that every single character is annoying. The kid is annoyingly indifferent about the fact his father is probably dead (most of the time). The dad spouts irritating internal monologues nonstop. The dad’s robot is NEVER not talking. The space monkey makes a fart joke every couple of pages. You get the idea.

Also, the dad ends up finding his son not through any kind of skill or planning, but from pure luck. He just kind of stumbles from one set piece to the next until he miraculously is brought to his son, making the entire plot feel meandering and unimportant. I’ve seen this same type of story done far better in other comics.

[Dávid Novotný · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finding Nemo in space. But for the most time, you won't even notice you are in space. Original line where father is searching for his son is 'enriched' by another 'mystic' one. It's there so probably whole story could be spread to more story arcs, but instead of feeling of something big that is behind and slowly pops up and make you looking for another issues, it just felt dull. Last issue was just bad, with really stupid deus ex machina. I liked art, showing space like colorful ocean of strange beings.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the main characters is a little boy so I am genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed this comic!! But it is Jason Aaron and I do have a tendency to enjoy his work so I shouldn't be too surprised. Lol.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorgeous art, but the story felt too rushed. This is a rare case where I would have liked more exposition, rather than being thrown into the present with only a couple of pages before the first big obstacle. Loved the critters, the worldbuilding just felt a little slapdash.

I received a free digital review copy from Image Comics.

[Trish Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's like The Last Airbender mixed with Finding Nemo, which is not as great as it sounds. It was pretty underwhelming.

[Allie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art was the best part! Unfortunately the story was flat and cliche.

[Victoria Hawco · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the best possible way, this is just Finding Nemo but in space.

[Caitlyn Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ❤️ Monkey

[Lightwhisper · Rating 5 out of 5]

The art wasn’t great but still very creative and nice story so far, especially if you have sons and understand how they think ;)