Imagine a world where the disease that destroys the world is a virus that turns people into primal beasts! Luckily, there is a way to cure this plague upon humanity. Find out how in Zenescope Entertainment’s new book Monster Planet #1!

MONSTER PLANET #1 (OF 5)

Writer: Joe Brusha
Artist: Marcelo Mueller
Colorist: Maxflan Araujo
Letterer: Taylor Esposno
Editor: Kellie Supplee
Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 30th, 2019

Previously on Monster Planet: The world is filled not only with humans infected with this primal virus but also with old evils that were just legends. Vampires, werewolves, and worse have come out of hiding threatened by the new world order. Chicago is in ruins and swarms of these virus infected humans threaten healthy humans and old monsters alike.

AN UNEASY ALLIANCE

Sergeant Blaire Spencer and her team are attempting to make contact with a vampire known as Xavier Drake. She believes that they need this vampire’s support to help save the human race. One member of her team is a wild card known as Carter who seems a little trigger happy  even though this mission is a diplomatic one. Upon entering the Xavier’s apartment, both Blaire’s team and Xavier’s crew meet each other with hostility. Will they be able to find peace before the human swarms find them?

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND

I think the foundation of this series is going to be the relationships between the two forces here. Carter is clearly a wild card and Xavier has a goblin in an AC/DC shirt on his team. This is hard to do because there is such a large cast of characters. In a single panel I was introduced to 6 members of Blaire’s team. Xavier had five people in his crew and many of these characters never got any dialogue lines. This huge cast was unsettling and often the characters had the same facial expressions as each other in the same scene. I understand that we may not have the space to give them anything other than a superficial description of them in the first issue but I wanted just a little more so I can understand what is going on in the story and set those seeds for interparty relationships.

The art had some good full page panels. I found myself looking at the finer details of these larger pictures and exploring the linework and detail. I wish these same amount of detail was used for the supporting casts facial expression and diversity of actions. Heck, you can tell me a lot about a character if one of them smiled and another frowned at a situation. Give me more information about this supporting cast! There were also many bubbles that followed Sergeant Blaire Spencer’s thought process and while she had a lot of thoughts about the mission and her worries about Carter; we had nothing on the rest of the cast. It feels like an easy solution to just give a sentence or two here and there about everyone else. I’m not a comic book writer and my suggestions may just be bad advice but I know I wanted more attachment to these characters.

BOTTOM LINE: ON THE FENCE

I think this book is going to suffer from trying to do too much in a mini-series. The cast of characters were too big and there is a lot of information missing in lore development that I doubt the writers will have time to approach. 2.5 out of 5 for Monster Planet #1 for me.

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