BOOM! Studios releases a sci-fi adventure comic about a bear who’s lost and ventures on another planet in Space Bear the graphic novel.
So what happens if you take The Jungle Book and turned it into a sci-fi sitcom this is the comic that is actually meant for underaged kids to read which is most likely any other Disney movie that you’ve ever watch. Even so, this bear would understand the survival of the fittest of this planet, in a cute way. The story and illustration is created by Ethan Young, and he’s the one who is best known for Nanjing: The Burning City and winner of the 2016 Reuben Award for Best Graphic Novel. Now I barely know some artists in New York, but I only know is one of my artist friends are students who want to make their art as their profession, even illustration and cartooning.
To enlighten you all, the artists in New York have some unlimited knowledge that came from their inspirations and from learning from one of the major art schools in the city, however many find that making art for a living in the city is not easy as they can. But the artists in New York tends to be more proud of their work more than anyone. In my times, I’ve seen some of the students who actually made their work for the audience to see, like how I unraveled my artwork into a student exhibition at a community college, and years after that I made a name for myself, and sometime in this year I made my face mask designs on sale to save lives during the pandemic, one of my friends was the best-known artist to be enrolled in SVA and made her name later on. I suddenly reviewed a comic about some stick figures who are experimenting in a lab that was created by an author who lives in Brooklyn. However, Ethan is one of the artists who actually made his work more depth to publish in a publishing company such as Boom! Studios. So yeah that’s what I know because artists really like to create what we love.
The front cover of the comic shows a specific background of a foreign planet surrounded by parasite moles and rocks beyond the planet, and here’s our main character flying with his jet pack. Now I noticed the background at the moment and when you look at the right side, the aliens just carved a monument of a bear and triceratops on that mountain, but could it be that there are some dinosaurs on that planet as well? How did they escape from the ice age? Oh and you have to love this, the illustrations that Ethan created is more like having an animation out of it, if this were a comic and I’m reviewing it, I can’t match his art style because from what I saw in his portfolio there are more illustrations that make you realize that most of his drawings are young adult based comics, the cover art and the other comic of Nanjing, but this one because he drew it as a family-friendly comic there are no exceptions whatsoever.
So from the start of the story, the main character was on his way to his home planet just until his ship was crashed down by fire damage to another planet and he was stranded. And again this is one of the comics which doesn’t include dialogues except when his motherboard is giving him some information on how to survive, and there are some dialogues of a drawing of the bear’s emotes, haha, somebody makes an emoji or a sticker out of that, and this time there are only a three-paneled comic which is more efficient for the readers. So what he finds on the foreign planet is there are some aliens on the bear’s ship looking for food, but they found an envelope inside the ship, the bear was also hungry too. However, all he ever thinks about is how he’s going to get that envelope back and getting off the planet. But he was being attacked by some shadow creatures with an alienated language on its chest which is chicken scratches. He finds an artifact that shows the signs of the shadow creatures and how to solve it by using a sign language or emotional language? I don’t know, there are scribbles that would relate to the Native Americans or the cavemen carved them in a cave. This is like passing some positive and negative energy for living beings. Now here’s an interesting part, when the bear is chasing from a chimera looking bear, the shadow creatures took over his body and turned into their vessel. However, the whole reason that these shadow creatures are spreading across the planet is caused by some raccoon-like creature who was consumed by the darkness and lived in regret over the break up by the female chimera bear creature. But I wonder how will the bear survive in some foreign planet surrounded by alien mammal creatures?
The comic is interesting in the fact that this turned out to be a family-friendly comic for children. So it’s a great addition for children, it’s good. My ass! Yeah, I don’t mean to rain on everyone’s parade, but I do have some gripes. Beginning with my most minor complaint is that at the start of the story the alien creatures are stealing an envelope that contains the bear’s family photo of his parents being married. But why would they have to chew it like food? You might say it’s an interesting structure because it’s a family-friendly based comic which complies with every love and hate between the creatures, especially the raccoon and the female chimera bear. But it only complicates matters when their relationship is on loose or someone died in the process as a part of an inconvenience, and at the end of the day, the bear shows a philosophy that love is stronger in their hearts. There’s the part when these shadow creatures attack the bear, which only appears when a living creature is angry and the dialogue shows an alien sign for danger. HAVE YOU EVER HAD TO MAKE A SIGN TO SOME BAD GUYS TO CHASE YOU WHICH MAKES THEM LOOK SO BAD? It doesn’t help that the shadow creatures are attacking the bear, right until he discovers how to make them disappear with the power of love which would turn the sign sideways by using the palm of his hand. Also, the art that he illustrates is more like making animation whatsoever, I’m not saying that it’s bad, but interacting the other creatures like the shadow creatures can be a chore, the bear poses like someone making a stop, I mean was that magic? How is he even posing and defeating his enemies like that? The other part is the artifact itself, I mean how does the scripture actually translate the meaning of how these creatures turned from good to evil. Oh, and there are some colors too whenever if there’s a change of a creature’s mood. And I don’t even understand the part that the author uses emotes to translate the dialogue, especially the signs which relate the like and dislike button on social media. How the author illustrated the book is showing such a philosophy of love and hate, which could actually mean that these creatures have feelings among the way. Space Bear is such a comic filled with emotion and love with a vengeance.
Newsdesk