Comic Book Review: The Stranded #1

The Sci Fi Channel is venturing out. No longer satisfied with just lame monster movies on Saturdays and recycled sci-fi flicks from the ’80s and ’90s, they’ve now gone into the comic book business by partnering up with Virgin Comics, which have been responsible for some pretty good comics in the last few years, including John Woo’s “7 Brothers”, which I really liked. The cable channel and Virgin’s latest effort is “The Stranded”, a sci-fi themed comic book series.

“The Stranded” is written by Mike Carey, with art by Siddharth Kotian, and is described as such:

In The Stranded, the first Virgin/SciFi book, five ordinary people must face a terrifying question: What if your entire world – your childhood, your family, all your memories – was a lie? For The Stranded, it’s true; they’re all, secretly, from another world. And now a deadly, otherworldly force has returned to try and kill them, operating through a twisted, altered human called Janus. Their only hope: Tamree, a dark, mysterious woman sent to Earth as their protector. One by one, Tamree must awaken the buried memories of The Stranded – along with their powerful, unique psychic and physical abilities. But even if they can defeat Janus, they must also deal with a deadly threat from one of their own.

The first issue doesn’t waste anytime setting up the premise: a young man is talking to a psychiatrist about a superhero dream he keeps having; moments later, the young man is killed by a mysterious man dressed in very alien-like armor carrying a box that he talks to, and talks back to him. Or, to be precise, seems to be ordering him around.

We also meet Tamree, a woman who is dressed in the same manner as the killer (”alien-ish”). We learn that Tamree is some kind of alien warrior whose job it is to protect a group of alien “sleepers” who doesn’t know they are aliens, but are living on Earth as humans. She has psychic powers, and have been blocking their powers for the right moments (since they’re “sleepers”, I guess they’re either alien invaders or what-have-you; I guess we’ll find out in future issues).

The thrust of the first issue is meeting Tamree and getting a “feel” for her job — which is to protect all these disparate humans that are actually aliens with superpowers, only they don’t know it. In the background, another alien is trying to waste them all. It all culminates in a battle at a church where one of the sleepers is getting married, and where the aliens attack.

All in all, I liked the first issue of “Stranded”. There are things I’m not too fond off — the art, for one, isn’t really that great. It’s not bad, mind you, but I don’t see a whole lot of people buying “The Stranded” comics for Siddharth Kotian’s artwork. The scripting by Mike Carey is better. Carey throws around a ton of new jargon at us, and makes them work within the first issue. Right away we jump into the story and get a feel for what’s happening, what to expect, etc.

The aliens themselves are pretty interesting, a combination of high-tech and magic that will be fun to explore.

My overall grade for The Stranded #1: B-. Intriguing storyline, so-so art, and a great cliffhanger at the end of the issue.

You can read the first couple of pages here.