Creator: Owen Pomery
Avery Hill Press, October 2023
The promotional copy for this title is set out below:
The time approaches when the mineral that makes inter-system jump navigation possible will run out. When the last piece has gone the vast and scattered inhabitants of the galaxy will be stuck wherever they are. Some will have the means to choose this – others will take what they’ve got or at least what they can get. Either way, society as it has been for aeons will exist in a new state.
In the face of this impending seismic change the crew of a small cargo freighter struggle to make a living amid the chaos and desperation. Survival would be enough but a chance discovery alters their plans and may prove to be a vital key to unlocking a future for all – not just the chosen few…
‘The Hard Switch is an astounding achievement. Owen was born to make sci-fi. The drawings and story captured me in a way few comics ever have.’ – TILLIE WALDEN (On A Sunbeam, Alone In Space)
‘Thrilling, beautiful, wholly original.’ – ALEX DE CAMPI (Bad Girls, Parasocial)
‘The Hard Switch is great science fiction and great comics. Owen Pomery is definitely a cartoonist to watch! Highly recommended.’ – JEFF LEMIRE (Sweet Tooth, Essex County)
We have previously reviewed My Pomery’s work: first, the brilliant British Ice https://www.worldcomicbookreview.com/2020/06/29/british-ice-review/ which we regarded as “almost certainly the best comic we have read so far this year”, and then the much quieter and contemplative Victory Point https://www.worldcomicbookreview.com/2020/12/08/victory-point-review/.
The Hard Switch is quite different from both British Ice and Victory Point. First, it is a work of science fiction, of the interstellar colonisation type of the Alien franchise, with cranky machinery and hydraulic hooks, rather than the faux realism of ’80s cyberpunk which has come back into fashion in pop culture nor the effortless engineering of something like Star Wars or the classic Galactic Lensmen series.
The main characters are a salvage team: Ada, Haika, Mallic (a sentient, sardonic octopus), and Jones (who looks like a small beluga whale). They are out to acquire a substance called alcanite from wrecked starships. Alcanite is almost mined out, and it is necessary for travel between planets. Once it is gone, humans and aliens alike will be stranded on whichever planet they find themselves on, and galactic civilisation will end. This event is called “The Hard Switch” by the inhabitants of this future. Cultural and commercial dystopia is just around the corner, and it seems almost everyone is hustling in preparation for it.
It is an interesting premise, and the impending doom of civilisational change and all that entails reminds us of the climate change emergency. Forced adaption can be brutal. As with contemporary times, there is a particularly upsetting scene of a cargo-hold of refugees who have died as they waited for their journey off-world, their container marked as “low priority” by callous people-smugglers. There is a psychotic wealthy businessman who will kill to acquire an ancient alternative to alcanite, reminding us of some Russian oligarch but with the breezy demeanour of a tech-bro. Law enforcement officials have become complacent in the face of looming chaos: ““The world is crumbling. It’s all raining down. Go find yourselves a rock to hide under, like the rest of us.” And there is a nervous but firm gun-toting alien who says that he wants to recover bits of the crashed vessel because he and his people will build a home from the shattered hull, which reminds us of places like Ho Chi Minh City, where vast suburbs sit beneath corrugated tin roofs salvaged from building sites. Inevitably, in the future as now, there are the “haves” and the “have-nots”.
The crashed spaceship reminds us of a book entitled “Spacewreck, Ghostships and Derelicts of Space” written in 1979 by Stewart Cowley (see http://www.terrantradeauthority.com/tta-books-2/spacewreck-ghostships-and-derelicts-of-space/ ) This book was filled with haunting images of disintegrating starships, the impossibility of future technology in decay. Mr Pomery’s wreck, jammed in a canyon, evokes a similar sense of haunting.
Despite these appealing aspects of the title, we struggled with the characterisation. Mr Pomery’s distinctive artistic style, a Hergé-esque delight to behold when captured in large panels, does not work well at distinguishing between (human) actors in the title. We had to concentrate to distinguish between the dialogue of Ada and Haika. Ada at an early stage is in a gun fight, but there’s no sense of any sharp emotion once it is done and her adversary is dead. Both Ada and Haika are rough-around-the-edges derelict hunters, and so might be cut from the same cloth, but between the two there is not enough personality to go round. Other characters are a little vanilla. Mr Pomery could not have deliberately set out to depict people in the future as bland, given the sense of catastrophe he otherwise injected into the plot. The Hard Switch is the first title created by Mr Pomery we have reviewed in four years. Perhaps after British Ice our expectations were too high.
The Hard Switch is available for purchase here: https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/the-hard-switch-paperback-edition-preorder