There might be nothing worse than a comic that takes itself too seriously. Several years of comics in the eighties and Doonesbury come to mind, and they seem to forget that comics are about telling stories, focusing more on the messages and morals of said stories. Not so with Star Pig, an uproariously funny comic written by Delilah S. Dawson, illustrated by Francesco Gaston, and colored by Sebastian Cheng, with letters from Shawn Lee. In the far future, an Earthling named Vess gets in a space accident and is saved by the titular character, a mega-tardigrade with a kind disposition and an innocent soul, assuming tardigrades have souls. The two embark on a misadventure of galactic proportions and end up at the Beverly Hills Space Station, where sketchy humanoid doctors plan to do sketchy things. With a setup like that, there’s not a lot of room for stodgy, principled sanctimony, and trust this author, that’s a good thing.
Impostor Space Canines And Villain Monologues
At the end of the last issue of Star Pig, our heroine Vess was having a lay-down in dreamy Dr. Echozar’s room, while he took Theo the tardigrade off to go eat some food. The reader was shown that, after Vess and the doctor kissed, Echozar’s face started to melt, which is almost never a good sign in these kinds of stories. This issue opens up with Vess talking to Laika, the dog the Russians shot into space, who somehow made it to Beverly Hills Station, when Laika starts speaking and red tentacles erupt out of her mouth, a sure sign that she’s probably not actually Laika the cosmonaut. Vess does some quick thinking, uses the synthesizer to distract the Laika-creature, and then tracks down Echozar and Theo. The melting doctor reveals that his intent the entire time was to steal the secrets of Theo’s long life and hardiness, which is a bummer for our innocent alien friend.
Self-Destruct Mechanisms And Diatribes
Echozar belittles Vess and explains that he, a cephalopod, is a member of the alien species responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, which was a probe of squid-like proportions that was meant to seed the Earth for takeover but accidentally did the big bada-boom. Because of that intergalactic whoopsie, apes got the chance to evolve into humans and voila, now Vess is about to die at the tentacles of an evil squid. Star Pig throws a lot at it’s audience, but we’re here to catch it all, baby. Echozar doesn’t know where Theo’s home planet is, which alludes to a future trip there, hopefully. Vess synthesizes some “flying mobile Echozar-killing machines” and swiftly puts an end to her captor, but not before he initiates the self-destruct sequence for Beverly Hills Station.
Star Pig Gets Saved By…British Guys?
With only five minutes to turn off the self-destruct, Vess has to guess Echozar’s favorite song, with a galaxy of music to choose from. She has three guesses, and wastes the first two on Weezer and “Despacito”. Once again using the synthesizer to conjure up Echozar’s favorite album, Vess thinks on her childhood memories of her mother listening to The Beatles, and she uses her final guess to name “Octopus’s Garden“, which unfortunately does not turn off the self-destruct (huh?), forcing Theo to once again swallow his human companion as they drift across space, once again. Theo feels like he’s being pulled towards his home planet, but Star Pig was only planned for four issues so we might never know what happens.