Tartarus Vol. 1

Tartarus #1

by Johnnie Christmas, Jack Cole (Artist)

When Surka, a ruthless criminal warlord, escapes her prison pit, she unleashes a wave of destruction that ripples across Tartarus, a vital colony in an everlasting galactic war.
Years later when Tilde, a young cadet, learns that she's Surka's daughter, will she continue to fight on the side of galactic order or reclaim her mother's dark crown?

From #1 NYT Bestseller JOHNNIE CHRISTMAS (FIREBUG, William Gibson's Alien 3) and visionary artist JACK T. COLE (The Unsound) comes a sci-fi adventure for the ages.

Collects TARTARUS #1-5

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Comic Book, Fantasy, Space, Science Fiction Fantasy

177 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2020

Reviews

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Get yourself ready - author Johnnie Christmas is here to out-Incal Moebius, and drown you in worldbuilding. And there's some real interesting and inventive stuff here, with fascinating designs by Jack Cole. That said, there is so much lore and "flavour text" here, it quickly becomes almost impossible to follow the story. And the story is an epic one, with orphans who find out who their real parents are, and that there are other previously unknown family members about, and there are terrorist organisations, and two sides forever locked into cosmic warfare. This also means there are a ton of characters, so many that halfway through the book I couldn't tell them apart anymore. This wasn't helped by the story missing a central narrative drive - there is a main character, but I lost track of what she was trying to achieve. Then lots of stuff keeps happening, and I found myself not really caring about any of it.

It's a shame, because the art is full of life. Sadly the characters are not.

(Received an ARC through Edelweiss)

[Sud666 · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Tartarus" is different. That is not a bad thing. Set in a sci-fi universe, it looks at a prison complex planet known as Tartarus. One day, the most dangerous prisoner in Tartarus, the warlord Surka, attempts a breakout. After wreaking havoc, it seems she was killed.

Fast forwards to the future and Tilde, a Cadet in the Baxna Military Academy, goes to the Medlab to clone replacement lungs for her mother. During the DNA test, she finds her mother is not her mother and that she is the daughter of the warlord Surka. This throws her world for a loop as the Baxna military seeks her arrest and death as a traitor.

The rest of the story fleshes out the world and Tilde's relationship with her former family and now her reaction to the Baxna military and the forces that followed her mother.
The artwork is quite interesting and different. It seems to work well with this story and this world. While it is one of the more original stories, my main problem is with how Tilde went from being a Cadet in Administration to the bad ass in less than a second. That is perhaps the most galling aspect. I also had a hard time finding any of the characters to really like. The only one that is worth liking is Surka.

Still it is different and that is something fresh. While I was not blown away by this, it is an interesting story and I may look up the second volume of this.

[RG · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art is awesome. Has a slight moebius inspiration. The story is grand but i think suffers from too many similar characters.

[Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 3.75 stars

This was a wild ride- great readalike to Bitch Planet. The art wasn’t my favorite and the story had a few time jumps that made it confusing, but overall I enjoyed it!

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is far too ambitious for its own good. I read it nearly a month ago and can't tell you the first thing about it. Just character and world building salad with nothing to grasp onto. So... ok that's all.

[RatGrrrl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visually stunning with eclectic aesthetics in the glorious science fantasy sphere, evoking all manner of historical and fictional wonders, particularly Jodorowksky and Moebius' brilliant Incal, and so confident and cool in its rich worldbuilding and weighty narrative peppered with ludicrous action and sprinkled with levity. This is a rainbow chrome fist to the brain pan.

This is genuinely one of my favourite comics I've ever read! I can't belive I only came across it by searching on random on Libby with my library card! I'm so very excited to dive into further volumes of this epic!

There are old and new conflicts and relationships from the immediate and personal to the historic and galactic in scale and intensity, all handled with style and then self-assuredness that comes from knowing what you want to do and absolutely pulling it off spectacularly.

Don't get me wrong, I love The Incal, but it's humour and storytelling have certainly aged. This in some ways feels like a spiritual successor for the Incal with The Expanse's quality and follow through.

Day one of the new year and I already know this is going to remain one of, if not my favourite comic of the year!

[Jason Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a weird mix of technically not great (the way the story and the panels flow, characters seem to serve the plot) but compelling once you get far enough. I think what sets it apart is how different it is.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really quick and interesting read. I loved the concept and the art as well.

[David the Ñoldo · Rating 4 out of 5]

What you get when you mix Star Wars and Mœbius, along with some hermeticism and alchemy for a colourful scifi comic. Great worldbuilding with diverse characters.

[Paul Allard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science fiction comic series - very colourful and action-packed

This comic collection is about Tilde, a young lady on a space station orbiting Tartarus, a planet with problems. Without giving much away, she finds herself on the run on Tartarus and meets up with a whole bunch of weird and wonderful characters, all with different agendas and loyalties. The series is interesting and the artwork is detailed and colourful but quite small and can be hard to read. I received a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

[Alex Sarll]

A blockaded mining planet, a military station guarding it, a buried secret and an attack which throw the inhabitants of the two together... Oh, and as the title suggests, names taken from Greek myth are scattered around, though it never quite coheres as a retelling a la Ody-C. I initially thought the hook-up app which matched an inhabitant of the planet with a cadet on the station was implausible, but then I remembered that TikTok has become a geopolitical flashpoint, so fuck it, why not? Which means my main problem was how often the images took a little too long to read. There are some gorgeous, Incal-esque wide shots, proper crazy SF images, but the action and interaction scenes really don't flow too well. I'm not sure if that's the fault of the artist or the colourist, but feel particular sympathy if it was the former, because he's called Jack T Cole, and ouch. Imagine a modern writer called Graham T Greene who really can't do guilt, or a singer named Eartha T Kitt with no knack for insinuation.

Also, I definitely want to know more about the passing mention of 'Dark Void Polyamory'.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Daniel Kovacs Rezsuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

The designs, the backgrounds, the colors... The artwork in this book is astonishing, even with the minor character hiccups and inconsistencies. It can be easily compared to Moebius, Tom Parkinson-Morgan, and the works of other great psychedelic fantasy artists. But man, the storytelling and dialogues are just too damn confusing. I had to re-read every page to finally get a hang of things and still, the worldbuilding, conflict, and characters all felt underdeveloped. I'm really looking forward to the next book, but I can only give three stars to this one.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Johnnie Christmas and Jack Cole build a great new sci-fi world with alchemy and politics and space weapons and all that fun stuff. But as much as I want to see more of this world I don't care about the characters and their problems, we never spend enough time with them to get invested as the story is too busy trying to grow its world. It keeps chugging along and growing bigger but needed to take a step back to let the reader enjoy the characters for who they are and what they want.

[Bree · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The art is what really deserves all the stars!! 4 stars art and 2 1/2 stars for story. Had a hard time getting into it.

[tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Bill Coffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost feels like if Moebius did a 2000 AD comic.

[Jesús · Rating 3 out of 5]

What begins as an above-average prison escape turns into a run-of-the-mill sci-fi coming-of-age story. The first issue/chapter was brilliantly choreographed and tightly plotted, but the subsequent four get overladen with world-building, plot exposition, and lore.

On the whole, the art is fantastic, especially in the book’s few action sequences. But when the action slows, the art gets too static and the characters start to take on awkwardly stiff poses and dimensions. The organic curlicues and squiggly line work all bring the spiritual-technological setting to believable life.

A fun read, and it’s no small thing that this is from one the medium’s handful of Black writers. But it’s also a book that is not breaking any new ground.

[Michael Diaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know if this is worth 2 or 3 stars, maybe 2.5, which rounds to 3.

I guess it's possible to have too many ideas going on all at once in a story, because that's what we have here.

And the art. Oof.

Reminds me of Igor Kordey in a hurry. Maybe it's something you like, but it just seems so rough and unpolished, but not in a good way.

I am seriously debating if I even want to read the second volume because I honestly don't know if I care enough about these characters, which is a bad sign.

Also, I found myself reading not because it drew me in, but because I just wanted it to be over, which is another bad sign.

When I bought this book there was a lot of buzz around it, but honestly, I can't see why.

[Stacie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world of Tartarus was the most interesting part of this comic. I would love to explore it more, and explore the people in it. I didn't fall in love with any of the characters that we followed in volume 1, but I am willing to continue the series to see if any new characters come in that are more interesting, or perhaps one of the existing characters is fleshed out more. The surprise at the end definitely opened up the world a lot, and I love when surprises can do that. I think there is a lot of potential. Depending on how the plot unfolds in the next volume (how predicable it is/the tropes that are used) will largely determine whether I continue the series.

[Sucre · Rating 3 out of 5]

gorgeous art + an exciting setting but simply has too much going on for how short it is. there's a lot of characters brought in with very little introduction and they aren't given time to properly develop. by the end of this volume i was pretty confused on who several key players were, where the plot was going or what the main character was even trying to achieve. it makes me sad because if it was given enough time i know i would love this world and i could spend so much time just enjoying the art. the twist at the end was also super cool! i just don't think i can go onto the second volume with such a shaky understanding of this world, the characters or the plot.

[Mutated Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are you looking for an epic and action packed graphic novel full of mystery and also has characters that speak sign language? Then this is the one you’ll want to check out next. I’ve never read a comic with sign language in it, and now that I have, I don’t know why more don’t have it in their stories. I really enjoyed this. I think the art is beautiful and fits really perfectly, too.

Check out my full review here!

https://radioactivebookreviews.wordpr...

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is some weird mash-up of European comics and the 60s New Wave sci-fi. It’s very much in the vein of The Incal and other wacky Jodorowsky epics, or something like The Empire of a Thousand Planets (Valerian and Laureline), except a lot less coherent, with a messy cast of dozens that rotate through constantly. Ultimately unsatisfying for me on the story level, and the art is quite a mess, too, never clearly conveying what is happening. I kind of admire its ambition, but I just didn’t enjoy it when all is said and done.

[Lenore · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is pretty, I like the story, but the combo is very confusing. I get that the liquid is supposed to be formed by the mind into weapons, but is it also an all purpose healing item? Are any of the characters human? We see blood, but when a character cuts his hand open it’s...something else. Fights are very stylish, but extremely difficult to read- big colorful blobs are causing damage? Shielding? Both?

That said, I would like to read the next volume.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

I love some of the ideas in this, but unfortunately I neither have a grasp of what's going on nor who 2/3 of the characters are. What are their motivations and goals and loyalties? Did I meet Khleeph or whatever in the flashback in the beginning and that's why I'm treated like I know who it is? I think I'll probably read another volume because I think this could be a ton of fun. But right now I'm pretty lost, not going to lie. Typically that vibe doesn't work for me in a comic.

[Amanda [Novel Addiction] · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is interesting for sure, but I'm not positive how much I really enjoyed reading it. I think it was the art style that didn't work for me - mainly some of the expressions. But the story was good enough that I kept reading it. So if volume 2 happens my way, I'll probably pick it up, but I won't be actively searching for it.

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. Good enough that I want to read the next volume, but the plot was just too much for what is inevitably a somewhat slim volume. Love the world-building and I think the concept of the characters are good, but it is drowned out by such an epic plot that sucks away most of my interest by the end.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. Very cool graphics and colors. Expansive world building. Unfortunately, the break-neck speed makes it hard to follow. At times I wanted to shout SLOW DOWN. Need more time for information absorption and character development. If you like cool Sci-fi graphic novels, and are willing to go 100 miles an hour, worth the read.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A genre-busting, pastel-soaked, viscous romp dealing lightly with themes of family, revenge, and power, and showcasing impressive, detailed worldbuilding that splashes out of the panels and drenches your brain through your eyeballs. The plot is hard to grok, and it's in there sloshing around, but it doesn't go deep, so consider just letting the liquid wash over you and enjoy the flood.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the art that makes up this work is beautiful, so much world building happens that it confuses the story. It’s definitely a huge undertaking, but I became so lost in everything that was happening that by the end, I couldn’t really remember everything I read. The characters are compelling and the sci-fi aspects are very cool, but it did become confusing.

[Francis Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great art and interesting set up, but it never gets to capitalize on the foundation it's laying in this volume. It could end up being great or garbage but you can't really tell yet. I'll stick with it for another arc to see what happens.