Review: Wild Blue Yonder #1
Review By: Sergio Porras I've been doing my best to review books that I don't already have a familiar background with and it’s really been hit or miss. Before I was offered Wild Blue Yonder I had to stop myself from doing some research before making my decision, but decided to roll the dice based off the title. I thought I was going to be reading a book based in the old west or maybe a rad maritime comic but what I got was a book that sort of took the best of both those genre's and based its stories high above the ground in the open blue sky.
Wild Blue Yonder has three writers to its credit, Mike Raicht, Zach Howard, and Austin Harrison. Together the trio has brought us a story that reads like an issue of Dark Horse's The Massive with hints of Planetoid from Image Comics. Wild Blue Yonder is set in somewhat of a post-apocalyptic world where radiation and pollution has consumed the planet and if one is to survive then they must take flight into the sky. The sky is almost as dangerous as living on the ground. It’s the ultimate survival of the fittest and one fleet controls the sky with their advanced carrier, The Dawn, a ship that many would like to be in possession of.
Cola, an advanced fighter pilot, is on a mission to find a new gunner after the death of her last one. She finds exactly what she’s looking for when she meets a young man by the name of Tug. He’s a former miner who has nothing else to live for and is looking for a change of scenery, without knowing too much about what kind of danger is ahead of him, Tug decides he's in for whatever Cola has to offer him. It’s not fair to say that Wild Blue Yonder has flown under the radar just because I didn't know anything about it, but even after doing some research on the book after reading it I can say that its hasn't received the proper solicitation that it deserves and I hope that comic fans won’t write it off just because it hasn't been hyped up. For those of you who take the leap on something new then kudos, I don't think that you'll be the least bit disappointed. For the rest of you who will pick it up and put it back down after flipping through a few of the pages, then you'll be sorry when you miss out on the ground floor of what’s sure to be an amazing story from a creative team that has really given it everything they have.Zach Howard doesn't only lend his pen for the story, but also lends his pencils for the awesome art. The book is action packed and Howard does it so much justice with all sorts of action packed pages with a few full splash pages of one-on-one dog fights between the planes. Howard captures the desolate landscape of what the world looks like after being destroyed by pollution and radiation almost as if he's seen it with his own eyes.
Score: 5/5
Writers: Mike Raicht, Zach Howard and Austin Harrison
Artist: Zach Howard
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Price: $3.99
Release Date: 6/19/13