This isn’t your typical sci-fi story. It’s very understated—almost ordinary at times – which is not to say uninteresting. This simple, quiet story had me hooked from page one and kept me engaged all the way through.

In the previous issue, we met Amy, a teenage girl living on a mining colony in deep space, whose circumstances forced her to be cryogenically frozen for 30 years and thrust into a new world she knows virtually nothing about—the world of Earth. We saw her making new friends, learning, and trying new things, but, underneath it all, still struggling to adjust to her new life.

While the previous volume showed her making good progress in these endeavors, this volume drives home just how far she still has to go. She’s a bit like a small child. She’s learning for the first time all of the things that the humans who have lived their whole lives on Earth take for granted: things like a sky, a moon, and the outdoors. For Amy, Earth is the sci-fi world.

Amy also finally meets the strange boy she saw in the previous issue who seems completely disconnected from the people around him, with no real personality of his own. While Amy’s worldview is generally optimistic and filled with childlike wonder, the boy, Oliver, is completely nihilistic. The two are very different in almost every way, but they each may be just what the other needs.

This story unfolds slowly, but that’s a good thing. It’s a gradual journey, and, along the way, we get to meet a number of fascinating characters in interesting situations and explore them in depth. I’m looking forward to learning more in the next volume. If you like simple, understated, character-driven science fiction, then Space Boy is a comic you won’t want to miss.

Creative Team: Stephen McCranie (writer and illustrator)
Publisher: Dark Horse
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