Shockrockets
Issues 1-4. Written by Kurt Busiek, Penciled by Stuart Immonen.

Gorilla Comics, the new branch of Image, was founded not so long ago by a group of very talented writers and artists in order to create different kinds of comic books. If Shockrockets from Kurt Busiek (Astro City) and Stuart Immonen (Adventures of Superman) is any proof, they stand and deliver on their promise.

Shockrockets takes place in the distant future, on a post-apocalyptic earth recovering from an alien invasion, filled with King Kong-esque and Godzilla-like mutated monsters, abandoned alien prisoners of war, criminals, and a mad dictator named Coroda who wants to take over the planet. The Shockrockets are an elite squad of pilots assigned to defend earth against those threats, using special planes that combine human and alien technology. The series follows Alejandro Cruz, a young pilot who joins the squad after another member's death. Unlike the rest of the squad, Cruz wasn't raised to become part of it, and finds it difficult to fit in. The other members treat him with suspicion; some of them are downright hostile to him. Meanwhile, a traitor within the squad is leaking information to Coroda, who is poised to strike soon.

Shockrockets is inspired by various sources such as Robert Heinlein and, more notably, Japanese science fiction manga, but dismissing it as a mere pseudo-manga would be a mistake. It seems that Busiek and Immonen understand how to copy the right elements of the Japanese works while injecting their own concepts and ideas. The final result has a unique and different feeling to it. Busiek took extra care while writing the series, and managed to avoid all the pitfalls that await this type of story; despite dealing with the relationship issues amongst the squad members, Shockrockets does not turn into a soap opera. And although there are a huge amount of text captions, they do not distract from the story itself. Most importantly, the characters are not the typical clichéd heroes who save the world but instead come off as real people with real lives. Immonen's art realizes those concepts -- the characters' "average people" look, the very original fighter-plane design, the everyday life onboard the Shockrockets' carrier, and the bigger-than life action sequences are all presented well here. Another nice touch is that every issue tells the story from a different character's perspective, and while the story spreads across 6 issues, each issue itself is self-contained. And though you can really start reading it at any point, I personally recommend #3, as it's the best of the bunch so far (#5 and #6 should be out by the time you read this).

The series has two major problems, however. First, the text is too expository at times. This is probably due to the series' limited run of six issues (however, Busiek and Immonen plan it to be a set of minis, a-la Sin City, so this problem will probably go away in the future). There's also a lot of tech-talk. I personally didn't mind it too much -- it gives the series a more truly scientific feeling -- but many other people did. All in all, though, I found a lot to like about Shockrockets. In medium that sometimes seems to be dominated by the Superhero genre, it's a very necessary breath of fresh air. Shockrockets rocks.

-- Raz Greenberg

Shockrockets, published by Image Comics, is currently available through comic retailers.

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