Sunday, December 6, 2015

Space Riders Vol. 1

Written by Fabian Rangel Jr.
Art by Alexis Ziritt

Basically, Space Riders is everything I'd hoped that the recent Dynamite version of Jack Kirby's Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers was going to be.  Fabian Rangel Jr. and Alexis Ziritt have channelled Kirby during a particularly productive ayahuasca session, and have come up with this wonderful comic.

The Space Riders are a strange trio who fly around the galaxy in their skull-shaped space ship, looking to dispense justice as it's needed.  The leader of the trio, Capitan Peligro has just returned to the service, and has to prove himself after a disgrace a year before.  He's joined by Mono, an alien mandrill, and Yara, a robot.

As they go about their psychedelic adventures, they rescue a space whale, fight a large group of robots, and end up squaring off against Hammerhead, the Capitan's former best friend who betrayed him and plucked out his eye.

On one level, this is pretty standard space comics stuff, with more than a little flavouring from Joe Casey's Gødland, but Ziritt's fantastically crazy art really elevates the material.  Many of these cosmic style books get boring quickly, but that's not an issue here at all.  This is another example of how Black Mask Comics are sometimes hitting it out of the park with their more unconventional titles.

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