SCI-FI COMIC NEXUS

OK, here's a new one for you:   SPACE GOTHS ...cos, WHY NOT, yeah?   Goths in space... Traditionally, the Goth vibe lends itself more to horror than to science fiction, but the final frontier - with its cold, dark, sterile voids, enigmatic cultures and mysterious monsters - is also fertile ground for the macabre.  Zaki is a bounty hunter from the planet Anaxis, part of the Intergovernmental Council of the Human Empire. Anaxis is part of the Castores binary star system. The companion star also has an inhabited planet, Hakden-Aio, home to the humanoid Hakden-zarift (or ' snowmen' as they are commonly known).  The humans of Anaxis have a long, bitter history of conflict with the snowmen, with atrocities committed by both sides.  Anaxis soldiers ('Reapers') dress in long black coats with hoods and masks. Hakden-zarift are pale and ghostly with long, straight white hair and an androgynous appearance. They have the innate ability to freeze anything they touch, he...

Hundreds of thousands of kilometres above Earth a large portal opens up in the fabric of space. Dozens of menacing alien warships pour out of it, piloted by monstrous demonic creatures. The Moon is shattered, debris raining down upon the Earth to extinguish all life...  Not a good end to the day.... How well did it start? Also not good, at least for disgraced ex-astronaut Jonathan DeVane. It is the tenth anniversary of the disastrous Venture mission: DeVane was the commander of the mission, a space shuttle with a nuclear missile on board to deflect a comet that was heading for Earth. Damage from the comet's debris field handicapped the shuttle. DeVane attempted to launch the missile manually.... He failed. Debris fell on Asia, killing over three hundred people. Roundly blamed for the disaster, but cleared of all criminal charges, he resigned and went off grid to disappear from public view. Waking up with a liquid breakfast, he heads to work, joining a group of unregistered migrant ...

In an abandoned cathedral, many centuries from now, a mechanical sexton attends to his dreary daily tasks. The empty, ruined city below has long forgotten the sound of the ringing of the bells. One morning, as the caretaker makes his pre-programmed rounds, he encounters something most unexpected. This story is part of the Water Wars 2288 universe. Following a devastating coronal mass ejection from the sun, 80% of the world's water is now contaminated with radiation. Multinational corporations employ militias to guard over the remaining reserves of clean water... and to fight over them... It gets worse. The radiation has also caused insects to mutate into giant, carnivorous monstrosities. Not only that, there is also an alliance of thinking machines calling themselves the Robocracy which is also waging its own war against all humans. Basically what you have here is all your dystopias coming at once... This issue contains three separate stories: the title story, in which a robot se...

Arrakis: A barren desert planet, two moons, precious little water, yet it is the most important world in the universe. In all of space it is the only source of melange , or "spice", a psychoactive substance that enables the only known method of travelling faster than light. The planet, also known as 'Dune', is not as lifeless as it first appears, however. It is also home to the gargantuan burrowing sandworms. Huge, unpredictable, very dangerous... Plus there are the tribal human inhabitants, the Fremen, ritualistic and enigmatic. There are many threatening forces at play on this world, not all of them readily apparent...  Based on the award-winning 1965 novel by Frank Herbert, Dune is adapted as a graphic novel by Brian Herbert (son of Frank) and Kevin J. Anderson, with art by  Raúl Allén  and Patricia Martín,  with cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz. In 2003 Locus magazine readers voted the original novel as the "all-time best science fiction novel" and it ha...

  Japan, 2030:   Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg: a human brain and spinal cord encased in a synthetic body that gives her superhuman strength and capabilities. It's also a a very aesthetically pleasing model (this being manga cyberpunk): tall, trim, athletic with improbably pert breasts and a cherubic face. Don't be fooled by her angelic proportions, however: she is a ruthless law enforcer. It's a good job she's one of the good guys ... or is she? Ghost In The Shell   by writer/artist Shirow Masamune (debuting in 1989) is all about blurred boundaries: human/machine, truth/illusion, law/disorder... Kusanagi works for an anti-cyber-terrorist division, her team operating within large robotic suits (Fuchikomas) that resemble giant fleas and which are also sapient.Their targets are "ghost hackers" (who use virus tech to turn robots and cyborgs into killers), rogue droids and the traffickers who exploit the vulnerable to use them as raw biological material.  S...

Imagine a gladiators' arena from the Roman Empire. Now put it on a huge asteroid. Now attach huge engines to the huge asteroid, turning it into a giant space station. Now hollow out the interior to create living spaces for the gladiators, training pits, a market where they can buy food, quarters for support staff, trainers, vendors, servants, security, administrators, technicians, waste disposal systems, engineering sections, a control hub... Now populate it with a wide variety of alien life (some of it almost - but not quite - human). Now send it flying through space like a travelling circus on the look out for new planets to entertain with its brutal death matches. What do you have? Stone Star by writer Jim Zub and artist Max Dunbar. The flying arena puts down anchor (literally) on the planet Quellaquaserris, a beautiful rose-hued forest world. It beams out its hologram to the populace, calling the people to come and see the shows. All intelligent life craves entertainment, and ...

It should have all been so simple...  The job was just a quick extraction, dive into the Harmony Alliance encampment to pull out a liaison and his young daughter. Things went wrong pretty fast, however. No sooner does Montana Bones and his team jump out of their ship for an atmospheric plunge than they see that the plan has already fallen apart. What should have been a relatively safe region is the now the middle of a war zone. The area is overrun with fearsome alien barbarians on monstrous, six-legged beasts. That's not all, Monty then has to face a stinging betrayal... What's a space cowboy (complete with Stetson) to do? Five years later he is drinking in a bar with his droid pal Mace (yes, the droid can somehow drink, despite not having a mouth) in the spaceport city Novus Landing on the planet Jota IV when trouble walks in the door. A large, hulking alien has come to 'collect' one of the patrons, a confused human woman. Monty and droid combat the burly brute and sen...

There are certain essential character qualities that a starship captain truly should possess if he is to "boldly go"... Sharp wits, courage, self-discipline and a discerning sense of judgement.  The titular hero of Caspian Porter by writer Drew D. Lenhart and artist Juan Fleites has precisely none of the above...  What with drinking way too much in the bar on SMCI Corporate Space Station 01, getting in way over his head in a card game with some very shady characters, to waking up next to a beautiful woman who turns out to have a very jealous, very dangerous husband, he does not exactly fit the shoes worn by space opera legends of yore. Oh, and his starship is not actually a starship , more like a cargo transporter for ferrying goods to the outer solar system. Goods that he no longer has in his possession thanks to the outcome of last night's card game... "My boss is going to kill me!" he says, but his boss will have to get in line behind the aforementioned jea...

One wakes up from a strange dream. His left shoulder hurts... Two greets him in the common room, watching a video message from her wife and daughter. Last message before the mission... Three is cooking noodles. He offers some to Four but she doesn't want to spoil her strict fitness regime. She also had weird dreams... Final briefing: "Four years ago we received a beacon - a distress signal. It's origin, some four million light years from Earth. Within that beacon were schematics for forge gate technology." The team has a mission: to travel through the forge gate, which will take them to a world over one million light years away. There, they will find another gate, and so on and so on until they reach Terminus. They will not be the first team to venture through the gate. Mission Control lost contact with the previous travellers... Time to go. The team approaches the gate and One places his hand on the activation panel. Light swirls around them. It takes forty second...

Brute - The Toughest "Teddy Bear" in the Galaxy by writer Preston Squire and artist Owen Keenan tells of of the adventures of Kodee, a member of the Bruin species of aliens, who resemble living t eddy bears. Despite their diminutive stature, Bruins are very strong thanks to the high gravity of their home world. Kodee certainly uses this to his advantage when things get rough, hence his knickname. His one human friend is young Rose Kahn, who was abandoned in a space station as a teenager. Trying to get back to Earth, she falls foul of unsavoury characters until she is rescued by Brute.  The story and art are both fun and lively and it seems to be aimed at kids... of all ages. It is certainly light-hearted and family friendly, with no mature content to upset Nanny, but there is plenty here for the grown-up readers too. Issue 0 introduces us to the two protagonists as they return to Moohoovan, the station where Rose was ditched. No sooner do they set foot on board than they get ...

Imagine being an emergency medical technician. Pretty stressful, yes? You get the call and you jump into the ambulance and race off to the scene of the emergency. When you get there, someone's life is in your hands. Now let's dial it up a couple of notches. Your patient is in a war zone - a dystopian urban crime gang no-go area - and he needs medical assistance because ugly people with big guns are trying to kill him. You're not just giving him first aid, you are also rescuing him from danger, and putting yourself in harm's way too because those ugly people are going to turn their big guns on you too if you start interfering. So obviously you are going to need some big guns of your own and some very durable, high-tech body armour. You're basically a soldier performing a military-style extraction, with the addition of a flying ambulance. Such is the disturbing premise of Cyberpunk 2077 by writer Cullen Bunn and artist Miguel Valderrama, based on the high-octane act...