SCI-FI COMIC NEXUS

Shrii Ka Rai Ka Rai We're coming to take you away They'll do what they can They'll do what they must But when they do find you All there'll be is dust... The battle of Grizal: Jedi vs Nihil. Jedi Master Loden lies dead in the rain. Cause of death? Unknown. As his body rapidly dissolves into dust it quickly becomes apparent to his brothers-in-arms that they are facing a threat that defies all rational explanation. In Star Wars: The High Republic -Trail of Shadows by writer Daniel Jose Older and artist David Wachter the noble knights of the galaxy are shaken by this mystery. This story is set around 200 years prior to the events portrayed in the movies, during a time when the High Republic governed the galaxy with the help of the Jedi Order. Keeping the peace within such a vast territory often involves clashes with the Nihil, an organised group of marauders from the Outer Rim Territories who frequently raid worlds on the Frontier. In the Jedi Temple on the Republic capit

Eunice and her husband Peter board a rocketship bound for Rydra-17, 'The Paradise Planet'. Passengers travel within hibernation capsules for the duration of the journey, leaving the crew of two to pass the time (eleven days and nine hours) staving off boredom by reading, exercising and watching a banal soap opera. Of course, things don't go according to plan. A minor explosion in one of the engines sends the ship out of control, drifting 401 million kilometres off course and crashing on a desolate, nameless desert planet, inhabited only by huge, carnivorous lizards. Eunice emerges from her pod, which has been thrown clear of the wreckage. She hears cries for help coming from the ship and rescues Captain Glenda, whose leg is broken. Just an ordinary civilian on her way to a vacation up until this point, Eunice now has to dig deep and get in touch with her inner heroine, carrying Glenda out of the wreckage, treating Glenda's broken leg and assembling the hideously complic

In 2018 NASA sent thousands of worms up to the International Space Station to study them in microgravity. This was part of their research into the effects of space travel on the muscles of astronauts. That actually happened. What follows is a "What if..." based on those real events... A freak solar storm destroyed the ISS, killing everyone aboard with massive doses of radiation. Debris rained down upon the Earth, including the worms: radioactive but still very much alive... Years later and the worms have mutated into gigantic carnivorous monsters. That's not all, the radiation they brought with them has mutated every living thing on Earth; all humans are now weird animal hybrids, ants are big enough to pull caravans... Petey remains unmutated thanks to his environmental suit, and armed with a very large gun he hunts down the giant worms. This often involves blowing them up, raining great gory chunks of flesh all around. When he finds a strange apparatus inside the carcass

"Just fifteen years... Like a cat, basically." The Tomorrow Foundation in Silicon Valley has just created the first ever artificial intelligences: a pair of androids called Carbon and Silicon. They are prototypes for a series of robots that will act as carers for the elderly, a lucrative industry in a world with an ageing population and a culture that prizes individual autonomy over collective interdependence ... which is a fancy way of saying: a society in which people are too preoccupied with their own selfish goals to care for their senior relatives.  Simple automatons would be no good, of course; a carer requires empathy. To this end, the androids are endowed with all the intellectual and emotional capacities of human beings... and none of the rights or freedoms.  They are products. To maximise profits, the company needs to be able to launch newly upgraded models at regular intervals, just like the latest mobile phone. Therefore building them to last is not good business,

Come on we've all been there. Being single is no joke. For Risa, a single mom with a spirited twelve year old daughter, finding love is a real uphill battle. There are plenty of men out there but they are, it seems, with soul-crushing inevitability, all absolute jerks. But track down Prince Charming she must, and not just for the sake of her own happiness. The safety of the whole world depends upon it... Seven years ago she was a scientist in Japan researching dreams. Government sponsors decided that weaponising dreams was the way forward. Why send an assassin to kill the enemy when you can drive him to insanity with his own nightmares? Despite Risa's protestations, the work progressed and a breakthrough was made, but at a price. Forcing open the doorway to the dimension of dreams allowed horrors from the other side to cross over into our reality. One of those horrors killed Risa's husband in front of her and their daughter Machi. The girl has nightmares about this trauma

"We must all choose between the blade and the butterfly." Thirty years into the future the world is in the grip of a global recession. Artificial intelligence and mass automation has caused widespread unemployment. In the US an authoritarian government has come to power and has enacted Article 10 ( 'the Return') to eliminate the technology that has displaced so many workers. This creates a huge divide between 'the Augmented' who have chosen to integrate technology into their bodies and 'the Authentic', who have not. In response to the oppression of the techno-class, the resistance movement Neon Future was born, led by the mysterious Kita Sovee. Clay Campbell works for the government security services, rounding up illegal cyborgs, his escapades televised for the entertainment of the masses. He is the people's hero ... until one day he dies in a car crash. It's game over. Then he wakes up in a Neon Future laboratory. His body has been repaired w

"We always knew we weren't alone. We looked to the stars with hope, with fear, with anticipation, wondering when we met them, would they come in peace, or in violence. Then one day it happened. They made contact. They came not in peace, or in violence... but in business. With a proposition." The Consortium makes a deal with Earth: let them build an interplanetary port off the coast of San Francisco for space travellers to rest and refuel. In return, they give us new technology: the ability to use water as a source of energy. The deal is agreed upon and brokered by a group of powerful Earth corporations, who profit greatly from the exchange. Alien visitors are not to leave the port. Interaction with the human population is forbidden. A Naval blockade is set up to enforce this directive. However, some aliens break through the blockade and attack humans. The Earth Security Agency is created to tackle any such incidents. ESA agents are charged with protecting both humans and

"And as it happens, I too am unable to scream." Steve Walker has the same dream every night. A desert. Night time. He is surrounded by people. They are all looking up into the sky... but they have no eyes or mouths. Then the saucers come. A bright light explodes... Formerly a stuntman, Steve now works in a call centre. But the dreams disturb his sleep and he is late for work too many times... He also loses his girlfriend. Feeling disconnected from his own life, he rents a car and heads out into the desert beyond L.A. with no particular destination in mind. He comes across a group of people camped out in the middle of nowhere and asks them what they are doing. They are reluctant to tell him until he reveals that his dreams brought him to this location. A native American woman called Anna explains that they are trying to communicate telepathically with extraterrestrials. Her young daughter Sky takes him by the hand, welcoming him to the group. Unsure but willing to keep an open

In the third cycle of Léo's Worlds of Aldebaran series which began with Aldebaran , followed by Betelgeuse , we are introduced to a trio of explorers who have been sent to the planet Antares 5. Their job is to document the environmental conditions, in particular the fauna and flora, as part of an assessment for potential colonisation. They make a troubling discovery: some strange phenomenon causes one of the native animals to vanish into thin air, a clear sign of the existence of a technologically advanced alien intelligence... yet no such aliens are in evidence. It remains a mystery, and - from the viewpoint of the Earth-based corporation which plans to invest heavily in the colonisation project - a very costly inconvenience. The planet is not a safe place for humans... but will such a concern sway those who are motivated by huge profit margins?  Meanwhile or heroine Kim Keller is relaxing on Earth after her strenuous adventures on Betelgeuse 6. Staying with a friend in Paris, on

Time travel! What a totally fascinating concept, right? Just think of all the possibilities... Being able to visit any point in history, to witness momentous occasions, meet the legends whose lives have shaped the very cultures of humankind from the dawn of time down through the ages... One could unravel untold mysteries, fully document the most significant events, enrich the scientific, artistic and philosophical potential of the entire human race! ... or you could just hop in and out of endless palaces, temples and mansions, looting every shiny piece of bling that you can grab hold of, using the miraculous technology you have had the blind luck to stumble across to hoard as much swag as humanly possible... The titular protagonist of Marjorie Finnegan Temporal Criminal by writer Garth Ennis and artist Goran Sudžuka very much opts, with gleeful abandon, for the latter. As you have probably deduced, this is a comedy. Marjorie - blonde, sexy and kick-ass - uses time travel as a means t

"All this danger, all this adversity, it's threatening to swallow up a lot of people. But do you know what else it does? It forges heroes." With the creation of intelligent robots - called omnics - the world enjoyed a brief golden age of prosperity. Then the omnics turned on their creators. Around the globe, various countries created specialised forces to counter this threat. The United Nations eventually combined these into one organisation: Overwatch. For several decades Overwatch tackled the omnic threat and restored order to the world, but internal divisions within the organisation led to its demise, culminating in the destruction of its headquarters in Switzerland. Following this, the UN formally disbanded Overwatch, leaving individual states with the responsibility for policing their own territories. New threats arise, including the terrorist organisation Talon, which seems to be trying to create a new omnic uprising. The omnics themselves have also not totally disa

"Kickass mode initiated: aiming beams online, plasma reactors ready to fire." Jason is a soldier in a never-ending war that rages across the universe. Hooked into a hulking sapient mechasuit called Love, he is separated from his battalion, alone on a desolate planet. Enemy forces target him with a variety of high-powered weapons, but he stands his ground against them as he makes his way forward, hoping to find a way back home. His memories of his wife Grace keep him going throughout the relentless violence that comes his way. Planet Caravan by writer Andrea Amenta and artist Stefano Cardoselli from Scout Comics is a hard-core war story with a gritty, striking style and a bitter-sweet undercurrent. Jason is locked on course, moving onwards towards his goal with grim determination despite the horrors that assail him. Gigantic war machines and gargantuan warships are engaged in constant exchanges of high-powered ordnance; a desperate conflict that seems to be carried along on

You thought you were having a bad day? It should have been a straight run: after the Krogarrian Space Museum was destroyed by a meteor storm, Gil gets the contract to haul the surviving exhibits to a new home on Krogarr 9. It's a week-long trip, too long to leave eight year old Kadyn with the neighbours, so Gil brings the boy along for the ride. Just one problem: "Space is crapping boring!" Boredom swiftly gives way to sheer terror, however, when a gigantic space-dwelling creature homes in on their ship and decides to take a bite... Father and son clamber into spacesuits and are spilled out into the void floating in a cloud of wreckage and alien museum exhibits. Kadyn watches in horror as his father disappears into the beast's mighty maw. The monster heads for him next and Kadyn panics, arms and legs wheeling for something to grab hold of. Without looking, his left hand connects with one of the museum artefacts, a small, ornate wooden club - - and Kadyn explodes w

"Behind us, the world we knew is dead, but ahead of us lie the stars, waiting with untold promise, unseen wonders ... and untold dangers." The arkship Seeker 3000 is to be the first spacecraft to leave the solar system in search of new worlds. Earth's government, 'The Six' (representing six continents) have chosen a crew and also placed aboard a number of cryogenically frozen embryonic cells as a source of future colonists. The vast ship contains internal ecological environments and will serve as home for generations of star-farers. Captain Jordan Shaw knows the terrible truth, however. The gene bank contains a non-representative selection of humanity; relatives and friends of the Six. Also, the Six know that the Sun is due to go nova, killing everyone in the solar system. Seeker 3000 is the only hope that any of the human race will survive... Seeker 3000 was a pilot issue released by Marvel in 1978 with writer Doug Moench and artist Tom Sutton. At that time the

"We're going to die, all of us, the whole world... and I know when it happens." Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Carin Taylor is running away from home. Literally running, very fast, pursued by heavily-armed cybernetic soldiers, leaving a trail of havoc in their wake as they race through the backstreets of Millennium City (formerly known as Pittsburgh). What makes it worse is that the soldiers work for her mother... Carin's mom is chairwoman of Cyber Data Inc. which specialises in creating technologically-enhanced warriors, hired out to powerful multinational corporations that need someone to do their covert dirty work... So far, so morally ambiguous in a near-future America in which civilian government has faded away in the wake of private influence, but things go from bad to catastrophic when Carin stumbles upon the details of something called the 'Aphrodite Protocol'. Her only hope is Morgan Stryker, former special ops cyber-soldier who used to work fo