Siberia 56: Cold weather, high winds, murderous monsters

Siberia 56 should be a damned film project. Someone make this into a movie/TV hybrid project stat!. Take your Alien/Prometheus worlds and mix with your Pitch Black/Riddick, sprinkle in a bit of Event Horizon, Dune, and little Ghost of Mars.. That is the amalgamate feel that Siberia 56 gives. It is presented as a collection of three comic volumes: The 13th Mission, Morbius, and The Pyramid.

• Siberia 56 - Bec / Sentenac (Insight Comics)
• 156 pages
• Insight Comics
• ISBN-10: 1608878619
• ISBN-13: 978-1608878611

Siberia 56 is a terrible planet. It is a candidate for colonization ONLY because it has an atmosphere compatible with Human life. That is close to all it has going for it. The tropic belt ranges from 14° to -40°, with consistent lightning storms, erratic knife blade mountain ranges, and hostile life forms that live under the ice. If you get closer to the poles, the temps drop to -330° with wind sheer close to 200mph.

The novel opens on the 13th mission, a group of replacement pre-colonists who are dropping into the atmosphere for an eight year stint on the planet. They are eighty million light years from earth, so many of them are resigned to simply being home. Nearly a hundred years of pre-colony research has been happening and yet they still hit road blocks. In this case, multiple engine failure and a crash landing a hundred and fifty files from the HQ.

While stomping through the snow on a 15 day hike to civilization, the crash survivors stumble across the frozen corpse of a Silhur, under ice razor toothed worm about the size of a Naval Destroyer. Bitten and torn apart, they are left to wonder what could possibly accomplish this action and never be seen in a century of research.

They do not have to wonder for long. As they are terrorized by a beast who leaves a frozen wake of body parts, they locate several artifacts from a multi-million year old civilization who appears to have left a calling card for any who follow in their footsteps.

Goddamn good.

Seems like there is a trend forming where I am reading graphic novels translated from French to English. Some were English, translated to French then back to English, but I am digressing. This French graphic novel is beautifully crafted with intense images and an indepth plotline. As the volumes progress, and you are more vested in the plot, the story text becomes significantly more verbose. Christophe Bec and Alexis Sentenac have built a beautiful object here. The English translation by Ivanka Hahnenberger was precise and had I been unaware this was a translation, I would not have questioned it.

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Disclosure- This Graphic Novel was provided to me for review purposes by the publisher. The publisher however does not know that I have planted subliminal thoughts into their conciousness and will be expecting them to cook me pancakes any day now. We will see who comes out on top in this trade. Had their novel been unfavorable in my viewing, I would have provided clear critique to this point, no matter how delicious the breakfast foods delicately fed to me and my wife in bed. Bring mimosa.