Instead of my usual taste in comics, one’s hell-bent on displaying the many pains of living, I decided to review something light-hearted and upbeat: Space Battle Lunchtime #2 from Oni Press. From the cover, which is actually quite beautiful in its own cartoony way, I had little expectations to actually enjoy this story. It seemed garish, juvenile, and lackluster. I could not have been more wrong. Writer, illustrator, and letterer Natalie Riess hypnotized me with a surprisingly compelling story, filled to the brim with vibrant characters and gorgeous art. And yes, the book does have some flaws, but they are paled in comparison to the overall quality.
To give a quick summary, this is a book about a human chef, Peony, and her trials through an intergalactic cooking competition television show, Space Battle Lunchtime (go figure). Just writing that, it seems like a silly premise, but there is more than meets the eye here.
After the contestants are given their unique mystery item, to be incorporated into their dish, Natalie immediately starts to breathe life story. Page after page, she uses the perfect balance of conflict, mystery, and achievement. By the end of the show, which is not the end of the issue, each character is uniquely mirrored to their dish; a perfect metaphor for their traits. It is so rare these days to be able to know which character is speaking just by the bubble, and not the art.
That is not saying that the art doesn“t help, though. Natalie is a tremendously talented cartoonist. Her panels are bright and vibrant, making the entire issue a blast to read. More technically, I give her big praise on uncluttered panels with a lot of backgrounds.
As I said earlier, there was one problem that I found, but it is easily fixed. There was no real motive for the hero, save for winning the show. While that is realistic, I am not sure it is powerful enough to entice readers until the end of the story. I would suggest to Natalie, for future issues, to start digging into who Peony is, what she wants, and what she needs; although, with the quality of writing in this issue, I suspect that she is already doing that.
To conclude, I loved this issue. In particular my favorite part of the was when Natalie started telling the story of Peony off camera. It was a terribly fun deviation. The art, writing, lettering, and paneling were excellent. So much so that I am going down to Mile High Comics and adding Space Battle Lunchtime to my pull list. I suggest you all do the same. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
SPACE BATTLE LUNCHTIME #2
(W/A/C/CA) Natalie Riess (@Snarlbear)
Publisher: Oni Press
Author Profile
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I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.
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