In Review: Descending Outlands – Issue 1

By Antony Esmond on January 17, 2015 • ( 1 )

Chapter 1 – Introductions
Story and Colouring by Shaun Dobie
Art by Alvaro De Cossio
Lettering by Vince Hunt

Chapter 2 – The Heist
Story and Colouring by Shaun Dobie
Art by Paul Oliveira
Lettering by Vince Hunt

Chapter 3 – Awakening
Story and Colouring by Shaun Dobie
Art by Paul Oliveira
Lettering by Vince Hunt

Published by Evil Kat Studios: www.descendingoutlands.com

This 36 page comic is split into three chapters. It’s an unashamed sci-fi action romp in the mould of Firefly, Starcrash and Han Solo from Star Wars. The reader gets an opening sequence that sets up part of the mystery that will lay itself out further ahead in the series and chapters two and three flashback some five hours to the heist of a mysterious package from a heavily armed space freighter.

Shaun Dobie is the creative force behind the series and has a great eye for pacing and structure. As the story unfolds, we get just enough of the mystery to keep you coming back for more but there is also no sense of anything forced or decompressed. The raid on the spaceship is excellently conveyed and has a real sense of occasion to all the action and planning.

Descending Outlands - Chapter One Sample Page

Some sample pages from the first chapter of Descending Outlands by Shaun Dobie, art by Alvaro De Cossio

The violence is dealt with realistically and the art by both De Cossio and Oliveira well handled. The use of layouts and splash pages come with real panache and this could easily be an Image Comics book from its attitude and genre approach. As a reader, I had a couple of flip backs to figure out who was who, mostly down to some similarly-drawn faces between chapters but all in all I enjoyed the art.

Shaun drops a few twists and turns on the reader as the story speeds up and these worked really convincingly. The dialogue crackles along from action to conversation in nicely paced moments.

As a full on, no holds barred space opera of a book this plays with action, character interplay and mystery. A fun series opener.

I understand that Issue 2 is nearing completion (Shaun tells me he’s in the middle of colouring it) and is well worth jumping on now. I met Shaun at Thought Bubble last year and he is full of enthusiasm for the series and its future. He’ll be at the True Believers Convention in Cheltenham in February and the Melksham Comic Convention in August (I’m sure more dates will follow soon).

• Descending Outlands is on sale now online from www.descendingoutlands.com. You can also buy a digital or a print poster of the cover.

• You can find Shaun on Twitter @dobes2

• You can find Vince Hunt on Twitter @jesterdiablo

• Alvaro De Cossio is on deviantart: http://aentheartist.deviantart.com

Many thanks for reading.