Cosmonauts of the Future v2: “The Return”

The twist has been sprung! Volume 2 is a very different book, but still a lot of fun.

The Story So Far…

Of all the twists I’ve read in comics over the years, the one in “Cosmonauts of the Future” v1 might just be the biggest.  I mean, I know it was a possibility that Trondheim could go there, but I really thought he wouldn’t.  I guess I just thought he would play more with the idea of kids acting on kid things and discovering the frustrations in their lives that they really are the ones in charge.  There are no sci-fi boogeymen out there to blame for everything. Also, the real world isn’t nearly as cool as their imaginations.

That would have been a different book. I like this one just fine, though.

To spoil it, in case you haven’t read volume 1 yet and are now reading a review of volume 2 and feel lost: Gildas and Martina joined forces to prove that the world is run by either robots or aliens. Turns out, it’s run by aliens who recreated everyone but Gildas and Marina as robots.  Gildas and Martina are clones of their older selves.  The aliens couldn’t bear to see them die, so they went to great lengths to reconstruct and re-raise them.

Or, to sum it all up in one panel:

Aliens, Robots, and Intergalactic War

This book is more about Trondheim throwing everything at Gildas and Martina that he can.  On any page turn, there might be another twist.  There are three or four big ones in this book alone.

That’s the thrill of this volume.  It almost feels like Trondheim is making stuff up as he goes along. Whatever he chooses, it’s always to keep the kids off balance and uncomfortable.  He throws more humans at them, more robots, and more aliens.  He challenges their assumptions for who certain people might be.

If this book teaches us anything, it’s that everyone is a liar and you can’t trust anybody.  They all have hidden agendas that will often conflict with yours.

Through it all, he maintains a straight line of a plot.  This book is about the newly made aware Gildas and Martina surviving the attack of an alien invasion that everyone else thinks is not defensible.  Gildas and Martina don’t know any better, are newly reborn already, and refuse to give in so easily.  They’re going to do what it takes to survive, even if it sounds like an absolutely crazy idea.  And most of it is.  But, then, most of this book is crazy.  That’s the fun of it all.

The cast expands out along the way.  By the end of this book, there’s a team flying around in a spaceship having these adventures.  Gilas and Martina are the center of it, but they have a couple alien/robot friends who are along for the ride, too.   And then they meet someone else who was originally on their ship that crashed before they were cloned, and he’s a bit nutty.

Also, Gildas and Martina have their share of deadpan moments in the midst of the craziness surrounding them that made me laugh. I liked those a bunch.

The Art of Cosmonauts

Everything I said about the work of Manu Larcenet and Brigitte Findakly in my review of the first volume stands.

Larcenet gets to let loose a little more in this book, though.  He gets to draw some more alien landscapes and more aliens to go along with them.  They’re well designed — a mix between cute and functional and dangerous, where necessary.  There’s one character who spends more than half the book split apart in half for reasons I don’t to spoil just yet. But he cracks me up from just the visual standpoint.

History of Publication

At the time of this writing, Volume 2 of “Cosmonauts in Trouble” is only available digitally through Comixology. It’s in the works for Izneo, too, and I imagine will show up there any day now.  Or eventually.  At some point.

The illustrations used with this review come from the print edition. NBM published the first two volumes together as “Astronauts of the Future” back in 2003.  It had a different translation and font choice, which leads to some fascinating differences that I hope to devote a future article to.

Volume 3 is available in English for the first times of this week.  I’ve already read it and plan to review it soon.  Spoiler: I enjoyed it a lot.

Recommended?

Yes!  While it doesn’t have the bit fat juicy twist that the first volume does, it does have a series of interesting twists and turns that keeps you as the reader on your toes the entire time.  It’s a wild and crazy ride through space as our protagonists just try to stay alive to fight another day.  Once you get on this roller coaster, you’re not getting off for 48 pages.

— 2018.030 —

Buy It Now

At the moment, you’re only going to find this available on comiXology: