Review: The Space Odditorium
Following an alien invasion, the few human survivors are isolated in individual cells in a a huge contraption floating in space - the 'Tubeways'... Major Trauma is one such prisoner, a teenage girl who is fed re-runs of the same cheesy sitcom when she is not battling robots as entertainment for her alien captors.
Her only company is provided by the obsequious robot presenters, camera bots and terrifying yellow holograms of the sitcom family. Rebelling against her predicament, she vows to escape..... but is there anything left to escape to?
Writer Chris Calzia and artist Dave Law's The Space Odditorium follows the adventures of our young heroine as she punches her way out of her claustrophobic captivity. She gains allies along the way: the postmodern author William S. Burroughs (but with a TV for a head) and a sumo wrestler called Roast Beef.
The story careens along at a dizzying pace with MT jumping, diving and flying through various hazards in her race for freedom. She peppers her escapades with many witticisms along the way, with barbs aimed at her spectators.
There is the theme here of criticism of consumerist culture as a form of mind control; a well-worn trope to most of us but nevertheless perennially relevant. The choice of Burroughs as a protagonist is telling, as an anti-establishment drug addict he was very famiar with altered states of consciousness, which is reflected in the surreal themes of his writing (particularly in his most famous novel Naked Lunch).
This is no polemic, though, the tone here is very much on fun. Everything else is a means to that end, with the comedy element exploited at every turn. The fourth wall is cracked a few times when the characters complain about the narrator, whose constant droning irritates them...
Law's art is an explosion of colour and style with dynamic shifts of perspective and characters exploding out of panels. It's a mixed media approach with much use of watercolour paint, crayons, Op Art elements and enlarged Ben Day style ink dots, giving the pages a retro-futurist feel; comic art colliding with graphic design in a visually appealing way.
This is an energetic sugar rush that was made for the pure joy of comics as a colourful, dazzling spectacle that bursts off the page and makes you laugh. I think most people will find this refreshing and satisfying.
Zak Webber
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