Space Bastards #2: Casino Boogie

After a nigh-perfect, wild and woolly first issue, Space Bastards somehow manages to double down on its manic energy and fill in its backstory a little bit, giving some insight into how on earth (space?) the Postal Service became a high-octane, winner-take-all death race while also giving us some insight to the brutal competition’s founder, Roy Sharpton. And to be clear: Sharpton is most emphatically not a good person. He is, in fact, a huge piece of shit. In no short order he is: deluded, naive, casually racist, kind of dumb, a huckster and con man. But he somehow managed to fall ass-backwards into being one of the richest and most powerful men in the galaxy thanks to his shamelessly pandering vision.

Like all con men, Sharpton doesn’t care about his marks. He only cares about the end result. I’m not going to say that Sharpton might just be a metaphor for a certain orange Commander in Chief who also improbably failed his way into an extremely powerful position by pandering to people’s worst impulses – but, you know. It’s there if you want to run with it. Sharpton, at least, has the benefit of being entertaining in the most South Parkian, “Oh my god I can’t believe they went there” way possible. Sharpton is an unrepentantly awful human being, but we can’t help but love to watch him go. If Sopranos opened the door for “bad guy as the protagonist” prestige storytelling on TV, Space Bastards is, in its own way, continuing to push that ethos into comics. Crude, over-the-top violent, hilarious, but frighteningly plausible, this comic is utterly fascinating and engaging from the jump. Issue two does nothing to dilute that energy, instead building on it. There’s clearly a plan here that proves the first issue wasn’t just a darkly comedic fluke.

Writers and co-creators Eric Peterson and Joe Aubrey are well and truly onto something here with Space Bastards. There is legitimately nothing else like it on the racks. Add master artist Darick Robertson to the mix, and you have the recipe for early contender for Indie of the Year. Humanoids, as a publisher, is hitting the ground running in 2021 and letting us all know that they are a force to be reckoned with.