REVIEW: Freelancer by Martin Kirby

At this past weekends Thought Bubble Convention (See my previous blog) I was able to pick up a couple of small press titles. Not as many as I would have liked, but that's what happens in the real world when you have no money, unfortunately!
"Freelancer" was one of the ones I was lucky enough to pick up. I say lucky because, I had gotten through most of the convention, it was after 16:00 on the Sunday and I thought I was done with buying things for the weekend. Prior to the con, I had made a list of all the small press titles I wanted to check out while I was at the con. Then, mere days before the con, I lost it. This comic was on that list simply because, utterly by chance, I had stumbled across Martins tumblr. I instantly fell in love with his style and adored his "Last of Us" drawing.
So it's late on the Sunday and I had completely forgotten about checking out Martins stall. Simply put, there was just too much going on at the con for anyone to successfully get everything they wanted without a prewritten list.
BUT
with about half hour of the con left to go for the year, my printer Stu of UKcomics fame, came up to my table and I asked to see his haul. Amidst the haul was "Freelancer" and I instantly knew it was one title I needed to pick up. Particularly after Stu let me have a flick through it. He told me exactly where to find Martin's table. I was at the Lou Scannon table on my own though so had to wait for Jim or Kris to come relieve me of my duties.
Jim and his sister soon arrived at the table so I double timed it over to the Royal Armouries hall, where Stu had told me I could get the comic.
Suffice to say, I got the comic and had a pleasant, short chat with Martin and it was pretty much literally before the con finished. I picked up a copy of his "Last of Us" print too. How could I not? It's epic. Just need a frame now...
Anyway, TO THE REVIEW!

I didn't get to read the comic until Tuesday, on a sick day from work (post-con lurgy strikes again).
I started reading it and really dug the art style. I did think it started a bit... Insanely? Sort of full on and over the top crazy but that's part of the genius of it- it's a dream sequence of sorts. Then when it gets to the stories "real world" it's grittier and somewhat more akin to the sort of thing folk expect from Whedons "Firefly".
It's a light and fun read. The comedy elements work well and the action scenes are nice.

A lot of the "aliens" in the comic are anthropomorphic versions of rather familiar animals  (I'm assuming they're aliens at the moment as opposed to being the next stage of Earths animal evolution but that could all be opened up more in later issues.). This works pretty well for me as I'm a big fan of the game "Beyond Good and Evil" and this reminded me a lot of that. Never a bad thing in my opinion. The character designs are nice and there's a good healthy mix of all the sci-fi things we've come to love and expect from the genre.

Sorry... My photography skills seem to have failed me here...

The main character is a girl called Elena. She sorta reminds me of a healthy mix of Tank Girl and Luke Skywalker. Tough, fun loving but wants more from life. She's a crewmember, not the Captain, on a ship of barely-getting-by folk who seem to participate in some... Not exactly legal activities. In this issue in particular, it's about the crew picking up an artifact from some less than savoury gangster types. As is the way in the world of comic books and cinema, things don't exactly go to plan. Elena has, what i'm assuming is the set up for her own personal sidekick, a robot buddy called Veetu and the pair end up in the middle of something they were specifically told to stay out of.

I'm not much of a reviewer, I know. I find it hard to not go in to detail because in doing so, I would be giving away major plot points. I thoroughly enjoyed this comic though. All the way through. One major difference between this comic and my own, is this comic is considerably more family friendly. It has violent bits, sure, but I would liken them to the violence in the animated film "Titan A.E" (Which despite a panning from the critics, I thoroughly enjoyed) and so therefore, is more accessible to all ages.
Great story, great art and I'm intrigued to see where Elena, Veetu and the crew go from here on. A nice first issue to break you in to the universe. You pick up bits of how the universe works but I'm looking forward to when that's explored in detail.
It's great to see more Sci-fi titles making their way out there now too and this comic is reminiscient of classic sci-fi in all the right ways.
I'd give this a big 8/10 as first issues go!