Letter 44 Volume 1

by Charles Soule

[celinenyx]

Summary: On his first day of his new job, president Stephen Blades finds a letter of his predecessor. In this letter, he learns about an alien construction hidden in space, and about the space mission on its way to discover what the construction is, and why it's there.

What I liked:
- I've been binging on science-fiction reads lately, and I liked this take on the "intelligent beings in space" theme. More mystery, and less big-headed green guys
- President Blades is put in a difficult position - will he tell the public about the proof of intelligent being in the universe, or won't he?
- I liked how the spaceship team was made up of a combination of military and scientific personnel, and how they interacted with each other

What I didn't like:
- Jezus Christ, there is way too much text in this comic. Isn't the idea that both the pictures and the words tell the story. If you need so much text, you know you're not doing it right
- The political intrigue didn't live up to my expectations. All the different factions could have been awesome, but there just wasn't enough conflict. It was all fairly standard and predictable
- The art. It was just a bit meh
- By the end of the book, we've barely progressed in the story. Too much time is spent on unimportant subplots, and the main attraction doesn't go beyond basic development

Verdict: A mediocre politics and space mash-up. Mainly consists of heavy-handed dialogue and useless action scenes, without any real meat to the story.