Review: Planet Caravan
"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 its own momentum, its combatants having mostly forgotten the original causes for which they began fighting.
By an odd quirk of fate, the planet has flowers that look exactly like red roses. Roses are Grace's favourite flower. Here, however, their colour is rendered redundant by the blood that covers them, in a field stretching as far as the eye can see. Poetically horrific...
Jason maintains a constant dialogue with Love, whose main mass floats above him, dwarfing his human body, attached to him by cables. Love monitors the environment for incoming threats and also keeps a check on Jason's mental state, which is deteriorating as the gruesome journey continues.
The artwork is a powerful combination of roughly inked linework with softly blended watercolour washes. The overall effect is dramatically atmospheric, emphasising our protagonist's surreal experiences as he battles his way across an alien hellscape towards an uncertain destination.
The story delivers non-stop action, pulling no punches with the graphic violence and emotional shocks. As much a machine as the technological contraption he is welded with, Jason is as much a victim of war as the countless corpses that litter the ground before him. The image of his wife remains his sole guiding light, the hope of reunion maintaining his will to carry on through the nightmares around him.
Is there any hope of escape, or has this soldier passed the point of no return?
Planet Caravan from Scout Comics
Zak Webber
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