Steve Saunders Reviews: Mr. Phelps Space Detective #1

Steve Saunders Reviews…

Hypergeek would like to welcome guest reviewer Steven G. Saunders to the site. You may know Steve as a former writer of the All the Rage column at Comics Bulletin, or from his fledgling comic writing work on titles such as Secret Cross & Sorgon (featured in Orang Utan Comics‘ FTL #2 & #3), the Orsuville Webcomic, and many other upcoming projects. Steve recently became a featured reviewer at DriveThruComics, and because I’m a big fan of the DriveThruComics site Steve has asked whether he could cross-post his featured reviews. They agreed, and so here we are…

Today, Steve will be reviewing Mr. Phelps Space Detective #1, written by Shawn Granger, with artwork from Jason May, published by King Tractor Press.

The solicitation for the issue reads:

A tough-as-nails, all-ages sci-fi comic book that will stick it’s fist into your craw and pull out your intestines just to give a little tickle. Mr. Phelps Space Detective is a non-stop romp through space. A journey filled with beautiful cat women, alien lizard men, and all sorts of beverage. When you’re a space detective you never know where your next job will take you, or who might be hiding that Xxelon phaser behind their back.

Join Mr. Phelps, Kat and a galaxy of weird characters as they smash their way through space. Guaranteed to be filled with plenty of flotsam in every issue.

Considering I’m a huge fan of Fear Agent (Dark Horse), it stands to reason I’d be on the look-out for another pulpy sci-fi adventure “with stones”. Now I should mention right away that Mr. Phelps Space Detective is not as awesome as Fear Agent. I’m not saying it’s bad, though; oh, no, far from it. In fact, if you are looking for an action SF ka-boom fix, this should do rather nicely.

Mr. Phelps is, as the title suggests, a space detective. He also has a ship called the DeForrest (great name) and a side-kick / love-interest named Kat… who’s a cat. Well, a cat-person. Yes, a bipedal cat… person. Anyway, it all seems to make sense in the comic, which is full of space-faring adventure, explosions and people screaming in vacuum, greedy dudes named Jorge, an attack by clones, an odd device called a “hitchhiker” and lots of made up words like “skunc”, “frik’n scumlick” and “quarb”. In other words: Very, very fun.

And it’s this fun which carries the book along with solid, above-average writing. The dialogue is swift and smooth, and the scenes are paced well. This whole first issue runs at a good clip, really, and yet I never felt it was going TOO fast. In the end I was left with questions (the good kind) and a need to read the other two issues in this series.

The only major downside I can see is the art. Not that it’s terrible or anything, but it does have a “sketchy” and uneven quality to it. It looks better in black and white than it does in color, really. The first and last pages are colored, and while the coloring job is competent, very good even, it just doesn’t service the art as it should. But this is most likely due to the odd style of the line-work. There are some places where the illustration is just bad, like Marcela’s face on page 19; her face looks more like a clown’s than a comely woman’s with those bizarre looking… lips? Yeah, I’ll go with lips. I can see where artist Jason May has some serious talent, especially with spacecraft, aliens and technology (nice spacesuits!); but he seems to have a hard time with faces and even anatomy at certain points.

What I’m happy to report is that even with the above complaints, Mr. Phelps Space Detective is a freaking hoot to read! It’s not perfect, but if you’re looking for a rip-roaring space yarn to get into and, like me, are howling at the moon with your other two wolf pals for more scifi-pulp with extra grit and grime, you can’t go wrong with Mr. Phelps.

Rating: Three out of Five!

Review by Steven G. Saunders
http://www.baconlord.com

Mr. Phelps Space Detective #1 is available to buy from DriveThruComics, as a downloadable watermarked PDF for only $0.99 by clicking here, where you will also find a 2-page preview of the comic!