If you’re the kind of person who likes outer space, pop-culture references, and massive water bears, then Star Pig is the comic for you. Written by Delilah S. Dawson, drawn by Francesco Gaston, and colored by Sebastian Cheng, with lettering from Shawn Lee, IDW Publishing has given readers an absolute delight as we follow along on the misadventures of Vess Singh-Rodriguez, who was on her way to space camp when her ship was destroyed and she was swallowed by a sentient, gigantic, telepathic, and very nice tardigrade. The two were tractor-beamed onto an alien ship captained by an equally sentient alien spore cloud, who collects Earth artifacts. Gaston’s linework is vivid without being cartoonish, and Cheng’s colors bring everything to life, allowing Dawson’s characters to exist on the pages with a refreshing level of authenticity.
A tardigrade gets a name, and iced Keanu
At the end of the last issue, the spore entity needed to know what a hot dog was, and this issue picks up where it left off, as the entity clearly oversteps its boundaries by entering Vess’s mouth. Yikes. After introducing herself to the two aliens, the tardigrade realizes it has no name, and so Vess decides to call it Theo, after a historical president who resembled the telepathic tardigrade. The spore entity calls itself Johnny B. Goode after a vinyl record it found on the Voyager spacecraft, and it proceeds to show Vess and Theo it’s collection of Earth stuff., which includes My Little Pony figurines, Han Solo in carbonite, a Commodore 64, and the crown jewel, Keanu Reeves in a giant tube. Star Pig contains numerous references that “older” readers might not get, but consistently gets a chuckle out of this author.
Ro-bodies and Darth Vader Siri in Star Pig
Vess manages to convince Johnny to let her attempt to combine an astronaut suit with a “robutler” so that it may exist in a form with fingers and hands, which kicks off a sweet montage of doing science stuff. (BTW, if you’re into outer space science stuff and animals, check out Dark Horse’s Strayed.) Vess does a passable job and Johnny is psyched to be in a new body, until Vess knocks him over and escapes to the bridge, where she meets the ship’s A.I., which is programmed to sound like Darth Vader, and Siri, and Alexa. It sets the ship on a course to the closest spaceport, and during the shift into lightspeed Vess is smacked against a wall and starts bleeding from her head knocked unconscious. The innocent and naive “star pig”, Theo, considers freeing Johnny from his robo-prison, but Vess wakes up in time to stop him, only to fall unconscious once again.
Beverly Hills Station has….humans?
Upon docking at the Beverly Hills Station spaceport, a team of medical technicians board Johnny’s ship, gazing in wonder at all the Earth tech and various collectibles, which are apparently illegal to possess, before they find Vess, an “actual living human”. Theo negotiates their assistance, instead of Johnny sending them away, and the two are taken into the spaceport with the medical team. Theo is excited for Vess to get healed so they can continue on their way to the megatardigrade’s home planet, but the final panel of the issue reveals that the med tech who will be assisting Vess is a human herself. Ooooooo! Fantastic cliffhanger to a fantastic issue; the future looks bright for Star Pig.
