Yeah, yeah, so I'm not keeping up as well as I'd hoped. Lots of interesting things going on, though.
Before I get to the comic, some shameless self-promotion: I'm curating an exhibit at Lougheed House in Calgary that is a partial history of the queer community in Calgary. I'm also curating a queer comics exhibit at the new Calgary Central Library at the end of May. If you're in town, you should come and check them out. I'm pretty proud of what we've done.
A few months back (and I can't remember if I've told you this story yet), I get rid of 9 boxes of books from my shelves and storage. It was a very cathartic moment, and now I just want to get rid of things. When I took the books to a local independent store, they gave me just over $200 credit. And they have thousands and thousands of dollar comics in their basement. I think you can see where this is going. The way I reconcile it is that 200 comics takes up waaaay less room than 9 boxes of books.
I picked up the first two issues of Futility as I scoured through the boxes last week. I'd decided to only get things that filled in holes in my collection - dollar bins are a great place to track down the stuff that you'd like to complete, but that you're not so invested in that you spend huge amounts of money. I filled in most of the old DC series The Warlord from dollar bins. But, to be honest, when I saw the cover of this issue, I had to get it. Comics very often offer a combination of intrigue and shock on the cover. And today's comic is very much pulling on the old EC comics that perfected that technique.
The story is good, and I'm very much hoping I'll be able to track down the last two issues. Will Red Hayes, mid-20th century small-town American farmer, be able to navigate the unrelenting weirdness of space and return to his home and family? Maybe. I'm not going to definitely say this one has a happy ending. I will say that the representation of alien life and culture in this issue is really great. Rather than the Star Trek route, where alien civilizations seem to simply be versions of human civilization from different periods, the aliens in this series are really alien. And they look it.
If you like weird space adventures, 50s sci-fi comics, or if you just want to support a couple of talented local creators, see if you can track this down. (I read issue #1 yesterday. Many of the same thoughts as with today's comic.)
"Hairy people! You can't just die like this! This is tyranny!"
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