The comic that started it all for publishing house AiT/Planet Lar (and gave it half of its name) is one that I've reviewed a few times before. I reviewed the single issues of both original mini-series, and I reviewed the trade paperback the original series and the One Shot, One Beer original graphic novel. However, none of those reviews are around online anymore, and I've got this beautiful little complete graphic novel sitting next to me, begging for a retrospective. So here goes, a review of the complete Astronauts in Trouble magnum opus, now collected and available in an oversized digest format that contains everything published under the Astronauts in Trouble name and is certainly a bargain at $16.95 for two complete mini-series, an original graphic novel and a handful of extras.
Astronauts in Trouble: Live From the Moon, the lead story and the one that set the whole thing in motion, is the action movie as written by Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet. Young clearly loves the notion of going back into space, and the insanity of a rich man who wants to set up base camp on the moon, but the big plot ideas are almost secondary to the characters that he's come up with. The Channel 7 team is your rag-tag bunch of heroes, with Heck, the somewhat flaky camera-man, the naïve, trusting (and ironically, most trusted man in America) Archer, and the producer, Annie, who reminds me a great deal of Dana from the TV show Sportsnight. None of which is to imply that they're cardboard or derivative characters, just that each has a personality I could immediately latch onto and enjoy. Same with Hayes, who comes off early on as a nice mix of powerful businessman and wide-eyed dreamer, and is later revealed quite plausibly as more like a blend between Ross Perot, Ted Turner and Alexander the Great. He also gets to play exposition man and master villain, and might be the most flexible character in the whole story.
Artistically speaking, Live From the Moon is the only place where the story stumbles, as Matt Smith opens the proceedings and doesn't quite nail everything down as well as I'd like. While Matt Smith's art wasn't entirely to my taste, though, I have no quibbles at all with his storytelling abilities, as he expertly moves from splash pages to multi-panels and keeps the whole thing moving. In that respect, he blended very well with Young's script. In some of the shots, such as the one with the moonships taking off early on, you can practically hear the soundtrack playing in the background. Then Charles Adlard takes over and everything gets a lot better. Especially the full page missile launch and the faces on the characters, which looked a lot more distinctive.
Adlard became the go-to guy for Astronauts in Trouble after that, illustrating all of Space: 1959 and One Shot, One Beer. While the general sensibilities of these two stories remained the same (not hard when the same writer handles it all), there was something quite different about each story. Space: 1959 is a complete departure from the last, set in the tail end of the 1950's and featuring completely different characters, although there is a link with Channel Seven. The story, as Young mentions in his introduction, hits different tones and styles in each chapter, but the whole thing reads more like a pulp serial than a 90's action movie, with a touch of the super-heroic that makes it read like what Young might have to say if he were to write a Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series.
Much as I loved the original characters in Live From the Moon, I fell instantly in love with the cast of Space: 1959. The hard-boiled guys on the edge of a new era in journalism, bantering back and forth, mixed with the same determination to get the story that the modern Astronauts have, really clicked with me. And Young captures the era pretty well, at least from a pop cultural setting perspective. The total fear of commie spies, the brutal actions of some of the police, the blend of technology as we know it and the old-time feel of life as it had been before all these transformations, it's all there. Then there's Colonel Macadam, the Nick Fury analogue who is really the star of the show, at least in term of getting the coolest stuff to do. He's over-the-top, almost a parody of patriotism, but there's such a core of can-do, never-say-die in him that you gotta love him. He's wrapped in the American flag, climbing a spaceborne rocket on the outside just to prevent the Russians from getting there first. It doesn't get much cooler than that.
After finishing up what amounts to a couple of balls-to-the-wall action stories, Young closes out the Astronauts in Trouble book with some barroom tales and some backup tales illustrated by familiar names like Brian Wood, Kieron Dwyer, Darick Robertson and Steve Weissman. I'm not a big drinker, not just because it's an expensive hobby but because, for the most part, I don't enjoy hanging out in bars. That's largely because I've never found one like the ones I love in fiction. There is no Cheers, no Callahan's Crosstime Saloon... and no Cool Ed's. If I could find a bar where the folks are like family, and the place is a haven for people to tell their stories, I'd probably be there all the time. As is, I'll visit them vicariously when someone creates them, and the tail end of this book takes place in Cool Ed's, a wicked cool bar that just happens to be the only bar on the moon, run by a robot who was there when a crazy man tried to take it over.
Of course, Cool Ed's is mostly just the trappings, and the actual stories that were originally in One Shot, One Beer read more like an anthology book, in that it contains a variety of tales. The stories range from science-fiction to another visit with Colonel Macadam (looking more Nick Fury-ish than ever) to something like a Chinese fairy tale, but the amiably sarcastic writing style of Young and the clear, stylish pencils of Charlie Adlard tie them all together. There's also more than a little humor in each of them, whether it's in the punchlines of the stories (particularly a wicked pun that ends the story of Jimmy's first day) or just some of the aspects of the stories (the interruptions in narration for the Chinese fairy tale, for example).
Astronauts in Trouble may not be for everyone, but the range of styles here, from action movie to science-fiction to detective fiction to Cold War espionage to guys sitting around a bar telling stories means that there's probably at least something here for everyone. And if you're a fan of what Planet Lar has to offer and haven't read Astronauts in Trouble, chances are this book would be well worth dropping a few bucks on.
