aama: 2. The Invisible Throng

Great weird series.

...Good Comic

Amazing art, great story

This is the second volume of another dull but worthy Euro serial. There are 84 pages of excellently-rendered unimaginative artwork – the characters and sets look like the sort of characters, costumes and settings that became the run-of-the-mill look of the later series of the Star Trek franchise (and the other mainstream SF shows of the era); you knew exactly what the costumes and alien make-up would look like, because they always looked like that. At least the new series has forged its own path.However, this is another character-heavy story, with, like so much Euro-SF, both graphic and film, the science fiction more set-dressing or fantasy, rather than, like most English-language SF, an integral part of the story.The characters look like the sort of ’extreme’ character actors that you see in Euro SF or fantasy films who are usually gurning or simpering in the background to make the film look like it is not set in the mundane world – Barbarella would be a less extreme version, being Hollywood, but most European-produced stuff will fit the bill.All that being said, being character-heavy, it is about the characters (and their robot, who has a ‘real’ personality, and is not a gimmick as in much Hollywood drivel) and could just as easily be set in an exotic colonial setting from the days when colonial settings weren’t frowned upon.If you are the sort of reader who looks down on American superhero comics and drools over dull independent ‘art’ comics, then you might like this. If you are just interested in comics regardless of genre, then you will likely find this intriguing enough to want to read subsequent volumes to see whether the writer has got anything to say that will lift this out of the blandness that infuses so much of these Euro comics.This second volume sees more of the main character/narrator’s background and unpleasant personality fleshed out, and an exploration party sets out into the wilderness to see what the terraforming experiment has produced. It still looks and feels like a standard Euro-SF album though.

Brilliant graphic novel which carries on from the first volume with the same sense of tension and intrigue. Superbly drawn and just enough dialogue to tell the story and keep you guessing. All the characters are great, and everyone should have a cigar smoking, robot bodyguard ape called Churchill! Looking forward to the next instalment.

Bought all four volumes. Great art and story.