The Adventures of Captain Cosmic 1-3, Reviewed. A Warm Hug of Nostalgia
How about some warm as a hug nostalgia-inducing space adventures in a pop art silver age style? Andy W Clift has got you, friend, with the joyous The Adventures Of Captain Cosmic.
Modern comic readers are spoilt for choice. We are so lucky for the sheer scale of available content. And one of the coolest parts of this, I think, is crowdfunding. Here is another great example of such endeavours. The Adventures Of Captain Cosmic is a no-nonsense classic superhero story. It is a love story to the silver age comics sticking to classic superhero and sci-fi storytelling. With a universe that lives by the most innocent of beliefs that good fights evil and keeps balance in all else.
So let’s start with the art. Andy delivers the most stunning homage to silver art lines and pop art styling. It’s eye-watering in its boldness and evokings of yesteryear. The muting of neon and primary colours keep the art popping while still enforcing its vintage aesthetic. The clean-cut character designs add to this further with its nods to the Captain Scarlet, Adam west age of superhero. Space is portrayed perfectly in tone with the style, and a personnel favourite aspect of this comic. The buildings and crafts all have nods to classic sci-fi which add together to present something new yet wholly familiar. This all expertly crafts a clear universe with expectations for classic sci-fi superhero shenanigans.
Andy delivers on these expectations with this story from its opening pages. The first page itself is like a big hug of lovely happy classic sci-fi storytelling. It made me feel like a child again, instantly wondrous and innocent. We are in space. There is a Galactic Commonwealth. There are evil forces. Want to know how evil? There's missing planets. Cue dramatic music!! There is pitch-perfect universe building at play here in the opening pages. We shoot to sector 42 (I hope that's a Hitchhiker's reference) where sits the Cosmic Citadel. Home to the Galactic defenders Captain Cosmic and his daughter sidekick Kid Cosmic. It’s time to investigate those missing planets. What a call to adventure. The story follows the exploits of Captain and Kid Cosmic in a standardized formula. That isn’t to be reductive of the storytelling here, more of a comment on how well this story really leans into its identity as a staple of classic storytelling. It’s the most unapologetically straight forward good versus evil story as it must be to deliver itself so assuredly.
This story is unrelenting in its delivery of a straight-up feel-good escapism comic. It encapsulates the childhood innocence age of superhero and fantasy wonderment.
If you want pure and simple escapism storytelling The Adventures Of Captain Cosmic is perfect for you. The current run of three issues each are standalone stories, each as brilliant as the next with issue four expected in the new year it’s a perfect time to seek this one out. With all issues available digitally from Andys website and print copies available through Frontier comics website.
Review 4.5/5
