Review: Terranauts
1950s America: One night a group of teenagers on a dare go 'spelunking', rapelling into a big hole in the desert. This is not just any old hole in the ground, however, it is the site of a nuclear bomb test some years earlier. When the kids fail to return the next day, the local sheriff goes to investigate... and he too disappears.
The authorities are called, not just the police but also a trio of specialists, the 'Terranauts', who are called upon by the governments of the world when inexplicable phenomena arise. They are: Professor Pilar Chavez, geologist and mineralogist from Brazil; Doctor Nickolos Karathanos, palaeontologist from Greece and Doctor Thaddeaus Donovan, biologist from America.
They get to work and soon uncover signs that some kind of large flying reptile is responsible for the disappearances... has Man's splitting of the atom unleashed some prehistoric monster upon the world?
Terranauts is a retro delight from Don Secrease (script and colours) and Paul Daly (story and art) of High Adventure Comics. Their work is very much in the style of the Golden Age of comics (1938-1956), contemporary with its setting.
Our heroes' adventures take them far and wide; tracking down meteorites with mysterious properties in Belgium and France; carnivorous insects on the rampage in the English countryside; mystical clay tablets in Egypt, the jungles of Brazil and the Alps... All this adding an air of international intrigue evocative of James Bond. Likewise, our intrepid agents have gadgets and gizmos like Pilar's wrist-screen radio (called a 'Tracy') and their assistant Nathan Aberdeen in his 'sky-jeep'.
The tone here is light-hearted fun with an old-school nostalgic vibe. The drawings are in keeping with this, nicely recreating the vintage look, though with a little more realism to the characters (which does nothing to lessen their expressive power). This is a loving homage to old-fashioned adventure stories such as Doc Savage, Tintin and and Boys' Own tales of derring do.
Like a yesteryear X-Files, Terranauts takes in a variety of out of the ordinary occurrences, aptly tackled by our sleuthing geniuses. But will brains be enough to rise to the challenge of a creature from a world that time forgot?
Time for these retro boffins to become dragon slayers...
Terranauts on High Adventure Comics
Zak Webber
Twitter - @sfcomicartist / Instagram - @sfcomicartist
JOIN US ON FACEBOOK! - SCI-FI COMIC NEXUS
*****
***
*
Comments
Post a Comment