Review: All Hope Is Lost In ‘Rogue Planet’ #5
by Brendan M. Allen
The crew of the Cortes set out for an easy payday. That’s not exactly how it went down. In a matter of hours, their only chance of leaving this rock intact literally exploded and most of the crew is dead. Glory and Alex are miraculously still upright and kicking, and if they don’t end up killing each other, they might just figure this thing out.
Cullen Bunn paced this thing out brilliantly. It remains a mystery until the very last sequence exactly how Rogue Planet #5 will wrap this sucker up. I was a little worried at the end of the last installment that we weren’t going to get a satisfying blowoff, but I needn’t have concerned myself. This is Cullen Bunn, after all. The dude knows his way around horror and sci-fi.
Andy MacDonald’s art in this series remains creepy as hell. The linework isn’t overly complicated, but there’s enough detail to set each of the multiple species of dead aliens apart. Landscapes are simultaneously familiar and foreign. And that last monster? Lovecraftian nightmare fuel.
This is not an entirely original concept, and I think that’s what allows Bunn and co. to get this story told in just the five chapters. There are elements we have definitely seen before, in movies like Alien and television series like Doctor Who (The Doctor’s Wife and Silence in the Library), but that turn and the final pop are something else. Well worth the price of admission.
Rogue Planet #5, Oni Press, 30 September 2020. Written by Cullen Bunn, illustrated by Andy MacDonald, color by Nick Filardi, letters by Crank!
Summary
Lonely Orphan seemed like an easy paycheck to the crew of the Cortes when they landed there looking for salvage. Hours later, almost everyone is dead.