The Last Hunt #1 (of 4)

 Anything But Routine

    Centuries in the future, radiation has rendered the earth a barren wasteland. As a result, the human race has begun colonization of the milky way galaxy. The transportation of supplies by use of massive cargo ships is vital to ensuring the success of these colonies. But a direct path isn’t always the most feasible. Thus the earth is now used as a sort of hub for one ship to drop off supplies as an another is used to retrieve the goods.

     That’s the mission for the cargo freighter Ragzon: a relatively routine pick-up from mother earth and then it’s back to colony base. However, when the Ragzon crash lands during a radiation storm, the mission becomes anything but routine. It will be several days before repairs can be made. Thankfully, the ship is stocked with plenty of water, food, and air. It even has some protection from the outside radiation. What the crew doesn’t have is a prayer against an ancient evil that has come into the Ragzon’s cargo hold.

The Chills Take Time

     The Last Hunt, written by Hannu Kesola and Ken Janssens, is a 4-issue miniseries by independent publisher, Amigo Comics. It’s a sci-fi thriller that doesn’t quite start off as a typical story about the future. With quite a number of F-bombs and nostalgic sexual innuendo, I first thought I was reading a Tarantino-style script. There’s one character that just can’t keep his manhood in his spacesuit and he’s quite frank about it. I also thought that I might be reading a cosmic soap opera version of Melrose Place. It’s a story that does it’s best to show what colonial space life would really be like. If the first dozen pages are true, then sex and boredom are the two biggest attractions to interplanetary travel. 

The Last Hunt starts off very slow like John Carpenter’s Dark Star. Yet at the halfway mark, the Last Hunt morphs into a hybrid of Alien and Event Horizon. Once the crew of the Ragzon learn that the earth might not be abandoned after all, the tone of the book changed from insipid oversexed drama to a bone-chilling shocker.

A lived-In Universe

     Though I had some initial misgivings with this first issue, I was in love with the artwork from the first panel. Artist Paul Moore’s futuristic universe is a lot like that of the Star Wars universe in that it’s been lived in. The cargo ship Ragzon is dirty, cluttered, and dank. Earth is an eerie tomb shrouded in swirling radioactive sand storms and crumbling apart due to centuries of neglect. Colorist Beth Varni’s use of moldy greens and browns add to the creepiness of this horror series. The way Moore and Varni reveal the source of the evil on the Ragzon on the very last page, I was hooked. I must know what happens next.

    I really would love to talk more about this book. But I am afraid that if I go much further, I will spoil the major twist in this issue’s cliffhanger. What I will say is that the ending is one that will make you exclaim ‘How did I miss that?’ Then you’ll do like I did and go back and read the Last Hunt again. Hopefully, you’ll be able to capture all the clues behind the sinister forces lurking in The Last Hunt.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

This review was originally published June 26, 2017 onoutrightgeekery.com