Pariah #1 Review

The first issue of Pariah, by writer Philip Gelatt and artist Brett Weldele, isn't really a story; it's a situation. A group of highly intelligent people are stranded on an old, rickety spacecraft with failing life support systems, on a collision course with Earth. Their goal: don't die. And that's about it. There is a sense of a greater story at play, but it's woefully neglected in favor of the immediate situation at hand.

The cast of Pariah isn't nearly fleshed out enough to make them feel like individuals instead of archetypes. There's the failed leader no one trusts; there's the ambitious woman with a superiority complex; there's the science nerd with all the answers. The lone exception is the voice of the narrator, the book's one shining personality. Sadly, that voice is wasted on the issue's preoccupation with solving a problem (Don't die!) instead of telling a story.

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