Comic Review: Astro Hustle #1

Astro Hustle #1

Dark Horse Comics

Writer: Jai Nitz

Artists: Tom Reilly & Ursula Decay

Exuberantly silly movies and other content of the 80’s sold itself by making the most insanely designed covers in existence. One glance at Astro Hustle #1’s cover and my mind’s eye streams the craziest 80’s underground VHS tapes. The fast-paced stories, the excessive amounts of purples, reds, and blues, the ridiculous over-the-top characters, they all hit at once. Astro Hustle is a brilliant love letter to the high-octane and rambunctious stories of the 1980’s. Identifying itself as a spiritual successor to UK comic stories of yore, this issue hits its mark and obliterates it.

Opening on a space installation celebrating a bachelorette party, we get the sense of debauchery amidst the crew. Aliens doing drugs, risqué-clothing choices, and a by-the-book robot color the scenery. All is fun and games until a long-missing colony cruiser, The Sinnematica, makes a surprise reappearance in the observatory’s sight. Shawzbot, the lawful bot aboard the station, receives word from an unknown entity representing The Papacy. On the stranger’s word, Shawzbot eliminates all crew members by opening the bay windows, ejecting everyone onboard into outer space.

I’ll admit that the story starts further away thematically from its second half, but there’s a reason for that. The initial sequence aboard the observatory satellite shows the frivolousness that’s about to disappear, making way for adventure. We learn Chen Andalou, a felon and the son of an executed revolutionary, is on the ship in hypersleep. Readers learn fast that Chen is almost always on the wrong side of the law for whatever reason and that it seems to run in the family. He’s taken in by Igor Roberts, a captain who looks straight out of the Napoleonic era. He’s clearly a dastardly rival to Chen who has sought him for years, sixty to be precise.

With four issues to tell a complete story, Nitz balances character work alongside tale progression beautifully. We see the main cast this issue without wait for long exposition bubbles. Instead, the characters such as Svetlana, Braxis, and the Grand Duchess have moments to show their personalities. Braxis is a brolic space-barbarian who can tear a head off by blinking. Svetlana is an acrobatic pirate set to be captain of her ship with Carbon John’s death. The Grand Duchess knows the political games one must play to get ahead. Their personalities are bombastic and will make the series even more memorable.

This issue couldn’t sell me without the cover drawing me in and the art keeping me here. Reilly’s pencils remind me of Paolo Rivera’s art and are reminiscent of the Golden Age with modern updates. I can’t get the image of Chen’s face, furious and blood-splattered, out of my mind. Decay’s colors deserve a writing credit for what they manage to do for the story’s biggest beats. At one point the characters are standing over a mass grave of bodies piled on top of each other. Decay’s colors manage to make this moment feel cold and show the bodies as blue while the red jackets disappear. It’s the flame of Chen’s rebellion exemplified, dying out as he’s arrested by Igor. The art does so much more than give this issue something to fill space between words, it is a major part of understanding the story.

Astro Hustle feels torn out of an era long gone and brought to our future. I haven’t been so excited about a piece of content emulating the 80’s since Kung Fury. I’m looking forward to seeing where this series goes and am glad this book is taking to the shelves. I hope it inspires creators to play in this era and be bold about mixing genres to craft unbelievable worlds.