I typically try to find some profound message with my reviews. I try to talk about the history of storytelling, the building blocks of what makes a good story, and pretty much anything to fit the work I'm reviewing into some larger context. But with StellarLands, I'm struggling to find that context. Not that the comic is bad. Quite the opposite. I enjoyed it just fine. And sometimes that's enough. It's a typical sci-fi story with an interesting main character that has action, fun dialogue, and moves fairly swiftly for its length. Which, honestly, is really all one can hope for in a book.
The story is about a superheroine named Anvil Liza who is given a mission on a remote moon. After traveling a great distance to get there, she crashed lands and encounters two orphans from a past war. After assisting the children while accomplishing her mission, they ultimately betray her and try to escape on their own, a catastrophic decision that results in their death. Anvil then flies home, back to her life of duty and loneliness.
There's a compelling arc here about Anvil merely operating as a cog in a machine that she's powerless to stop. The children she's trying to help are victims of this machine, and despite her attempts to save them from it, they fall prey to it, leaving Anvil saddened and feeling powerless despite having immense power herself. It's not the most dense sci-fi I've read, but it packs enough of a thematic punch to make the story interesting. The art is on point as is the pacing and plotting. There are even periodic in-universe ads to flesh out the world. The dialogue could use some editorial input, though. A lot of the dialogue got quite wordy and could have been trimmed down to make the balloons smaller. But overall, StellarLands is a work to be proud of.
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