New from Image Comics this week is “Southern Cross.” In the beginning, we find lead character Alex Braith traveling to the moon, Titan. She is traveling aboard the Southern Cross in an attempt to bring back her dead sister, Amber. So, immediately this series begins with a bit of a mystery. We find out that Alex is the rebel and that her sister, Amber, is the good one. Somewhat of a cliched storyline, but we'll run with it for now.
This plot and storyline have certainly been told before and the question for this series becomes, how will the story be told? Will the characters be fresh and pull you into the story? Unfortunately, that just doesn't happen here. Alex isn't the most personable character and doesn't exactly interact well with the other characters that are introduced in this issue. She's very stand-offish and cold. While you understand her desire to know what happened to her sister, there is nothing else that is you can relate to with her character. We do discover that she had some issues on Earth, but nothing is explained further. It's like the writers drop a seed and seem to forget that it was mentioned. The inner dialogue is dry and doesn't pull do anything to make you want to know more about the character, except to find out what happened to her sister, Amber.
Overall, the art is decent in this issue. The drawing of the ship and the loading of the ship is impressive, those aspects really are well done. There are some other scenes with the Gravity Well that look pretty awesome as well. As a whole, the colors are VERY dark throughout the issue, but the coloring does match the general feeling and atmosphere of the issue. The storyline is dark and the colors reflect that well. There is a scene where Alex shuts her door on her neighbor and with the way the door is closing it looks like the neighbor should be pulling his arm through the door but the panel doesn't portray that very well. Instead, it looks like he was just placed there and the scene was drawn around him. Scenes like that add to the overall lack of emotion that permeates throughout this issue.
As a whole, I think that “Southern Cross” is a decent first issue that is off to a precarious start. I'm left wondering is whether or not future episodes will make this series a compelling read?
Posted by: Jeff @jeff201