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Cloudburst
An experimental weather machine, a transport ship filled with hundreds of families, and a troop of hired killers converge on a derelict colony world only to discover it's not abandoned. Lauren Moore is a brilliant young scientist and the creator of Cloudburst: a massive satellite designed to control rainfall on dry planets. Onboard a new colony ship carrying several hundred families, soldiers and cryogenically stored animal embryos, Lauren has been commissioned to use Cloudburst to terraform the planet. What Lauren doesn't know is the soldiers escorting the ship have been sent to remove the existing colonists to make room for the new ones. The corporate term is eviction. The human term is mass murder. The only man who can help her is a mysterious drifter who some say is only a myth, an invention of desert nomads and lunatics.
- GenresComics
64 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2004
10 people want to read
About the author
Justin Gray
739 books80 followersJustin currently writes Novels, Graphic Novels, Video Games, Screenplays.
He has held various jobs including, fossil hunting, microphotography of 20 million year old insects and plants trapped in amber, seminars and exhibitions on the cleaning, mining and identification of prehistoric insects for the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian. He traveled to the mountains of the Dominican Republic and mined amber.
He has also worked as a victim advocate for Victims Assistance of Westchester, a not-for-profit organization that helps victims of crime.
He has held various jobs including, fossil hunting, microphotography of 20 million year old insects and plants trapped in amber, seminars and exhibitions on the cleaning, mining and identification of prehistoric insects for the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian. He traveled to the mountains of the Dominican Republic and mined amber.
He has also worked as a victim advocate for Victims Assistance of Westchester, a not-for-profit organization that helps victims of crime.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 17, 2025
Awesome short read. This argument was originally written for cinema and it shows. If you're a fan of movies like Aliens, you feel right at home. Heartless corporations looking for profit and humans caught against alien life forms. It's a mix between Aliens and Dune. The writing isn't super deep, normal for such a short story but it's above a B-grade movie, don't expect silly dialogues for laughing. It's only fault might be the short format, this could probably benefit from having more space to extend the story.
It really surprised me, especially considering the bad reviews here. I'm guessing the other readers really aren't fans of this type of story. If this was a movie, with the same quality as the comic, I would see this having a cult following just like the 2 first Alien movies.
It really surprised me, especially considering the bad reviews here. I'm guessing the other readers really aren't fans of this type of story. If this was a movie, with the same quality as the comic, I would see this having a cult following just like the 2 first Alien movies.
June 7, 2013
“Cloudburst” is mediocre in every way. Its story is standard sci-fi stuff about a corporation wanting to colonize a planet where some sort of alien or xenomorph lies hidden waiting to kill everyone. As in any other countless “adaptations” of the concept since “Aliens”, the corporation is corrupt and evil and our heroin along with her sidekick and love interest must defeat the aliens, the mercenaries and save the poor colonists.
Nothing and I mean nothing here is remotely original. You can predict the whole thing in the first third of the graphic novel. The heroine is the typical blond with giant breasts and perfect round butt proudly displayed in almost every page. Nothing wrong with being a bit exploitive, God knows I love some nice sexy art, but everything here is so bland. How you can make a “perfect 10” blond look boring I don't know, but “Cloudburst” succeeds. And what little personality our heroine has, besides being hot but with brains, is highly unlikable to the point where you start rooting for the aliens and the mercs a few pages in. Her sidekick is a tough, mysterious native to the planet with long black hair and an emotionless face. He hardly talks and for all his toughness hardly does anything except kill some weak bandits and run away from the aliens again and again and then get captured by the mercs. The mercenaries are at least somewhat amusing and the high point of the graphic novel. They are so amazingly stupid and incompetent they´re funny and the main villain has a few awesome lines and seems right out of a bad 80´s action movie. At least they have some personality, not something you can say for the aliens. The aliens are a cross between “Pitch Black” and... well “Aliens”. They show up, kill some mercs and are defeated off-page. Seriously! The artist never even properly shows them with any kind of detail, they´re basically a bunch of teeth in a few pages.
Yes the art is also mediocre. Well not really. The first pages are drawn by one artist and the rest by another. Christopher Shy starts the graphic novel with some haunting images. Shy draws a bleak world, a terrifying existence with almost a dream like style and its raw and magnificent. After these brief pages we go to Eliseu Gouveia and the style changes completely. The colors are far too saturated and the art style has no spark or creativity. Its a “copy” from the same style seen in countless “random” comics with no charisma or personality. Gouveia plays it safe leaving no room for flair or audacity. Even when there´s some gore or nudity its all “by the numbers”.
There simply is no reason to read “Cloudburst”. Its story is unoriginal with unlikable characters with no development and its art is simplistic and... you guessed it, unoriginal.
Don't bother.
Nothing and I mean nothing here is remotely original. You can predict the whole thing in the first third of the graphic novel. The heroine is the typical blond with giant breasts and perfect round butt proudly displayed in almost every page. Nothing wrong with being a bit exploitive, God knows I love some nice sexy art, but everything here is so bland. How you can make a “perfect 10” blond look boring I don't know, but “Cloudburst” succeeds. And what little personality our heroine has, besides being hot but with brains, is highly unlikable to the point where you start rooting for the aliens and the mercs a few pages in. Her sidekick is a tough, mysterious native to the planet with long black hair and an emotionless face. He hardly talks and for all his toughness hardly does anything except kill some weak bandits and run away from the aliens again and again and then get captured by the mercs. The mercenaries are at least somewhat amusing and the high point of the graphic novel. They are so amazingly stupid and incompetent they´re funny and the main villain has a few awesome lines and seems right out of a bad 80´s action movie. At least they have some personality, not something you can say for the aliens. The aliens are a cross between “Pitch Black” and... well “Aliens”. They show up, kill some mercs and are defeated off-page. Seriously! The artist never even properly shows them with any kind of detail, they´re basically a bunch of teeth in a few pages.
Yes the art is also mediocre. Well not really. The first pages are drawn by one artist and the rest by another. Christopher Shy starts the graphic novel with some haunting images. Shy draws a bleak world, a terrifying existence with almost a dream like style and its raw and magnificent. After these brief pages we go to Eliseu Gouveia and the style changes completely. The colors are far too saturated and the art style has no spark or creativity. Its a “copy” from the same style seen in countless “random” comics with no charisma or personality. Gouveia plays it safe leaving no room for flair or audacity. Even when there´s some gore or nudity its all “by the numbers”.
There simply is no reason to read “Cloudburst”. Its story is unoriginal with unlikable characters with no development and its art is simplistic and... you guessed it, unoriginal.
Don't bother.
May 30, 2012
Christofer Shy's Dune-influenced pages is worth, this slim GN's cover price. Justin Gray has written very good comics (his early run, with Palmiotti, in Jonah Hex and The Resistance),but this story is something forgettable...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews