I really enjoyed Rogue Planet!

The first few pages depicted a pretty brutal scene that was quite shocking. I absolutely love the artwork. The characters are very distinct and the scenery and backgrounds are beautifully drawn and coloured.

Plot-wise, Rogue Planet gives a new take on the backstory of the space horror genre. I do not want to give too much away, but I will say that although Rogue Planet's plot has similar events to many space horror stories, it gives a different reasoning for why the current events are taking place as well as how they will be affecting the future of the characters in it.

I wish the story had been longer. Even if it had been broken into parts, I would have liked to get to know the characters better to empathise with them and their situation.

The plot felt a little rushed to me and it seemed that the characters suddenly jumped to out-of-the-blue but ultimately correct explanations for what was happening to and around them. They also had some fairly underwhelming reactions when coming up on one of the more shocking discoveries a crew could make on a new planet, assuming that the world of the story did not already include humans being aware of sentient extraterrestrial species.

Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐ 2.5/5 stars

Here we have your perennial vessel arriving to a new, mysterious planet, the crew a bunch of rogue characters with a mission to accomplish. Of course, weird things start to happen and members of the crew start to get into complicated situations...

"Rogue Planet" is another one of those, what will we find here?, sure nothing dangerous' stories, a sci-fi genre that can be a lot of fun if done well, even if there is little else to be said about surprising encounters in the dark. And the story has some things going for it: action, deaths, a mystery, some mysterious cult... However, there are some shortcomings that can't be overlooked. First, the story is too rushed, going from A to B to C with little time for the reader to empathize with the characters. Who is in danger? We don't care, because no one has the chance to have their background well developed. This, of course, impacts the story too, with the random events given little time to keep the tension, the mystery, before some other event happens right away or a not very well developed explanation is thrown into the mix. That is particular clear with the pay off, the ending a little bit of a letdown.. Also, for a horror-in-space kind of story, it is not particularly scary, and, sadly, we have read (or seen or played) everything that happens here a thousand times before. That doesn't mean "Rogue Planet" is bad, it just means that it doesn't have that special thing that makes it connect with the reader.

The art is good, but sometimes the color palette was too extreme for my taste. The characters are well drawn, very different between themselves, but with so little time to develop them, it is all for nothing. The world, on the other hand, could have had more variety in backgrounds and in color palette. Some of the big vignettes are a little bit repetitive, too.

"Rogue Planet" is fun enough, but it doesn't have anything to make it stand out of the crowd.

Just really did not feel like this book did anything for me. The art and body horror were interesting. But I really struggled to get into this story and do not even understand the ending.

“Rogue Planet” is quite interesting but the story feels like its been done before. The book has a few plot holes that if addressed would maybe make justice to the amazing art.

Eight crew on the salvage vessel Cortes track a rogue planet because they believe it to have a large payload. Things don’t go as planned!

The crew members are introduced to the readers as they land on this unknown planet, with five crew venturing out to discover the never named payload. They immediately discover a graveyard of space ships that crash-landed, but that does not detour them, nor the large blobby creature that had multiple lungs, mouth and teeth that looms above them. Strangely, they keep sauntering along looking for their mythical payload. But soon enough this creature attacks them, picking them off one by one and incorporating them into their mass. When they are down to only three crew of the original eight, they try to leave the planet, but soon join the other crashed ships. An alien race who live on this planet are shown worshipping another life-form, with some sort of Genesis plot and sacrifice rituals. The last survivor finds a remaining humanoid from another ship and his hallucinations seem to tie into what is going on, but then the narrative is bookended by the aliens and their rituals that didn’t make sense to me.

The art was solid, and it definitely aimed to have an Alien movie vibe. Saying strange creatures are Lovecraftian is an easy way to describe a certain style of art, and it leaned that way but wasn’t quite there. There was a good variety to the page layouts. The crew members had a nice diversity to them, and the colors really popped. In fact, my pdf version of this graphic novel was the easiest to read online yet and the colors were vivid, which I so appreciated, as online reading is not my preferred method.

Cullen Bunn is an established horror writer, with his Harrow County and Bone Parish being among my favorite graphic novel series. However, this stand-alone story didn’t bring it home for me. While it wasn’t bad, it was cliched and somewhat bland. Not a single character stood out, and the ending confused me. However, Bunn is a favored author of mine, and I was glad to get an early look at this book through NetGalley.

When December hits and I need to meet my reading goal, I tend to hit the graphic novels pretty hard! Rogue Planet was one of the graphic novels I reached for and I’m really happy that I did. Rogue Planet was an extremely quick read and a fun science fiction short story. I really enjoyed the plot but wish that it had been the first in a series and that we got a little bit of a deeper dive into the characters and the planet. If you’re a fan of science fiction and/or graphic novels, Rogue Planet is a good choice for you!

The writing - ⭐⭐⭐
The story - ⭐⭐⭐
The illustrations - ⭐⭐⭐
Overall - ⭐⭐⭐

This was very Alien/Prometheus-esque with a bit of a twist. I enjoyed it, you are thrust straight into the action, the issue i had with it is the amount of explaining they had to do (something that often seems to happen in any sci-fi) to give the reader context.

Fave quote - 'Remember when people used to think space was beautiful? Before interstellar travel every scientist with a 'scope might as well have been a love struck poet. Now though, I realise, they were full of shit.'

Fave moment - The 'Zoms' a form of deep sleep the crew are put into where they are asleep but their bodies still pilot the ship and move around.

Rogue Planet
by Cullen Bunn, Andy MacDonald, Nick Filardi, Crank!
Pub Date: 02 Mar 2021

The art work is very detailed here, more so then I relly expected. I did enjoy the story line as well.

Really cool sci-fi horror book you can finish in one sitting. Great artwork amd great story, although it's not really bringing anything new to the recent sci-fi/horror revival.

Rogue Planet by Cullen Bunn, Andy MacDonald, Nick Filardi is a Sci-Fi graphic novel / comic. The book starts with a bunch of astronauts going into space and suddenly finding an abandoned planet. Salvage vessel Cortes tracks the Lonely Orphan, a planet with no star system to call its own.

The graphic of this book was very harsh. I do not wish to read such Alien rip off books to be honest. The crew did not seem professional at all. The alien or whoever that creepy looking thing on the planet was starts to fight. No time to actually develop the universe in the book.

The crew actually first resembles them as Lungs!! I mean "Are You Serious?" why would you want to call it that. It was gross and not at all entertaining. How did that one crew members disappears and stays back in the rogue planet isn't clear. I did not like this book.
_____

Thank You to NetGalley and Publisher for sending an eARC in exchange for a honest opinion.

** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Copy received through Netgalley

~

Rogue Planet
by Cullen Bunn, Andy MacDonald, Nick Filardi
★★☆☆☆
136 Pages
Content Warning: child sacrifice (alien), sacrifice, death, gore


This story started off with so much potential. It was in deep space, with a mystery, aliens who got on-page dialogue, and horror elements that weren't too gory but added a good atmosphere.
However, I was really disappointed to find that – as the story progressed – it felt like a blend of Alien and Prometheus, with very few original features that made the story stand out.
The big bad scare-factor was too reminiscent of the Alien xenomorphs to be surprising or frightening. And, though the story was about fear and how we create our own nightmares, I was left disappointed at the execution of the plot. Where it should have been psychological horror, it fell flat. I've seen the same concept done, recently, in Strange Skies Over East Berlin, and it had a far greater effect with the original storyline. I think the fact this was one too close to the Alien movies in concept, execution, and style, meant that I was left unimpressed.

I received a copy of this graphic novel through net galley in exchange for an honest review.

I have seen this graphic novel for a while now when I log into net galley and finally decided tonight to give it a chance... mostly because the cover kept sucking my attention to it.

The story was well written, the graphics were amazing, I guess I just felt like they could have brought out the struggle and the fear a little more.

Everything moved almost at lightning speed, which works but doesn’t work at the same time. I enjoyed the characters a great deal but it was the artwork that kept me sweeping through the pages.

I will be recommending

Rogue Planet was really surprising to me. It's the final book I read in 2020, just hoping for a short book to get me a head and I'm so happy to say I really enjoyed this story. Though it seems simple on the surface, there are a lot of smart things going for it. A group of humans arrive on this strange planet after detecting a signal coming from it. They explore the dark rocky landscape and soon discover something horrifying is going on involving a monstrous God that feeds on fear. Death is imminent as they each get picked off one by one in many different ways. The last act was especially impressive, I think, as it explodes in a mess of gore.

The writing is solid, so much so that even readers who are not familiar with scifi elements can and will enjoy the read. The author keeps the storytelling tight for this gory thrill ride.

This was a promising graphic novel involving a crew exploring a mysterious planet and things going sideways. I had a good enough time reading this sci-fi horror story and it gave me strong Prometheus and The Thing vibes, but unfortunately the writing just wasn’t super strong with this one. I was just left with a lot of questions by the end and wish there was more than one volume to fully flesh out the characters and plot. Right from the bat I was super impressed with the artwork, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to carry the book. Overall, I feel pretty meh about this one but you might enjoy it for the impressive artwork.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Oni Press for providing me with this eARC in exchange for an honest review*

This is an easy to recommend sci-fi title. The world is weird, deadly, and intriguing. Although we only meet the characters for a brief time, they have enough humanity about them to garner our empathy. The writing is top-notch; the story goes in directions you don't see coming. You become a happy, and terrified, traveler on this journey. The ideas behind the plot and characters, especially the alien natives, are universal in theme and the title does a nice job showing the story through different perspectives. An absolutely enjoyable read.

The crew of the salvage vessel Cortes detects a distress signal and ends up on a seemingly abandoned planet. What they find is an hostile environment: poisonous vapors, razor rocks and... a graveyard of spaceships. What happened on this planet? And if it's abandoned, then who sent the distress signal?

Rogue Planet is a great horror/sci-fi graphic novel and it was a true pleasure to read!
The story is quite good and, even if there are some elements that are classic of the genre (I can't say more or I'd spoil you the plot), it kept me glued to the pages until the end. It's a quick and entertaining read, I finished it in one sitting and found myself wanting more!

There are 8 people in the crew of the vessel Cortes but it's a bit difficult to tell them apart (they all wear spacesuits with helmets most of the times!). Unfortunately we don't know much about them, and only two actually talk a little bit about their personal life... not enough, in my opinion. I believe this book would have benefited a lot if it had a better description of the characters and their development during the story.
The pace of the book is also good: it has its slow moments, but it's mostly quite fast with growing tension. In my opinion it worked really well for this kind of story, but I found the ending a little bit too rushed: I would have appreciated a few more pages.

Now, the illustrations: they are just incredible, rich in details and with beautiful bright colors. I had to stop while reading just to admire the artworks, I loved the style and the vibrant colors: it was so gorgeous and fascinating and at the same time terrifying (which is exactly my cup of tea).

I really enjoyed Rogue Planet and I'd recommend it to all sci-fi and horror readers!
4 stars.

* Thank you to Oni Press and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I'll be sharing this review on my Instagram @michelareads, on GoodReads, on my Twitter account @michelareads and on my personal blog.

A great concept for a graphic novel, a cross between Dead Space and Sphere. While the overall story and accompanying imagery was absolutely fantastic, I felt a bit lacked in the overall story telling department. While I understand that this is an action packed fast paced read, it also lacked many opportunities to include rich story telling, perhaps about the alien civilization, or more about the deity they worshipped out of fear. Despite this, for a quick short action packed read about a mysterious alien force, definitely check this title out.

This was pretty disappointing. The cover art, the alien design was really nice. But the story itself? Not great. Confusing and not in a good way. The last 5-10 pages tried to wrap everything up and felt rushed.

An entertaining read with a cool concept. I really loved the artwork and the colors. It isn't groundbreaking but I had a lot of fun reading the story.

A salvage ship goes to a seemingly abandoned planet to try and score big. But the crew got more than they expected when they landed in a nightmare. As they explore the planet to find the payload they are looking for they must dodge razor rocks, that look like giant crystals, poisonous vapors and the dead of all who came before them. After being attacked by a giant piece of flesh with eyes, mouths and tentacles they make a run back for their ship. But the crew who stayed behind have also been attacked. They are taken by the natives of the planet as a sacrifice for the hungry god that crash landed on their planet long ago.

The art of this was lovely to look at. There were a few inconsistencies, among the art however. Sometimes characters were pictured without the breathing appliances they seem to need in the atmosphere. But the coloring was sharp and made everything look realistic. It was captivating and quick read, I finished it in under an hour. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror with their sci-fi.