Review: Wasted Space
Thanks to his endorsement, politician Devolous Yam rose to become the leader of the galaxy... and began a galactic war that cost countless lives and made Billy a pariah.
Disillusioned, Billy went on the run, changing his appearance and piloting a ship throughout the backwaters of space. His companion is Dust, a blue-skinned muscular 'fuqbot' who uses his erotic skills to earn the money they need to keep going.
Plenty of people want Billy dead, which is bad enough, but things get even more complicated when Devolous Yam's daughter Molly - who has visions of the future - escapes her father's influence and tells Billy that in order to prevent the destruction of an entire planet, her father must die...
The trio are now on course to a deadly confrontation with overwhelming forces, a situation that Billy - now a Born Again, dyed-in-the-wool cynic - wants no part of. He'd much rather spend his days getting drunk or drugged out of his brain, avoiding any type of responsibility whatsoever. He certainly doesn't want the fate of a whole world on his shoulders...
Then along comes another complication in the shape of Legion, a gigantic semi-humanoid god-like being who appears to Billy and Molly with a mission for them: kill the Creator!
Wasted Space by writer Michael Moreci and artist Hayden Sherman is a chaotic romp through space with a diverse cast of bizarre characters and their highly improbable adventures. Billy and his crew very often find themselves - usually without planning it - in the middle of some truly cataclysmic struggles. By blind luck, or divine intervention, they manage to survive... Do they indeed have a grand higher purpose to fulfil?
The tone here is comically ironic, gleefully sending up all the clichés of the grand space opera genre. Sherman's art is appropriately unconventional, sketchy but with powerful impact.
Running throughout the whole story is a strong emphasis on philosophical musings, particularly of the existential and ethical varieties. Billy and his pals are often asking the big, big questions, and they go on about it at great length: Why are we here? What is our purpose? Is this right or wrong? Who am I, really? What does it all mean? Does anything really matter, anyway? etc., etc.... This may not be to everyone's taste, but it certainly provides ample material for irreverent gags and comebacks.
The pretensions of religious and political movements that offer easy solutions to the eternal problems of existence are mercilessly torn apart by Billy and co. Even the Anarchism of Molly's brother Rex is not safe from his scathing critique; Billy shoots it down as just yet another self-serving power trip.
This is certainly a different take on the usual approach, and the intellectual postulations are always presented in flippant tones. There is no preaching here; more like the type of deep-but-not blather you hear at a party when people have had more than a few drinks. Here the butt of the joke is not just the fixation on the philosophical itself, but the common occurrence of it in popular fiction, including comics and especially in science fiction, for which it has always been fertile ground. Don't worry, nothing is sacred...
None of the above takes away too much from the action, which is satisfyingly over-the-top and gleefully implausible. When Dust and Molly are presented with the opportunity to dump Billy and his chronic pessimism to join a band of super-powered adventurers engaged in a righteous battle to defeat an evil tyrant, they jump at the chance, and many electrifying shenanigans ensue... but fate seems to be determined to bring the band back together.
And there is no escaping Fate, especially when it is a very menacing fifty feet tall and has a forcefully overbearing god complex...
Our heroes have an impossible task to perform, but when the very act of existing seems like an insurmountable obstacle, all endeavours are reduced to the same level. Doing nothing may seem like the only logical option, but it may simply be the least challenging.
Billy learns that the eternal search for meaning is not a simple path, it requires honesty, courage and determination. There is a way out of his downward spiral, and he is the only one who can save himself. To change, he has to take control.
"Do the work. Do the work."
Zak Webber
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