Review by Sabrina TVBand

Many different movies have used Alien as a springboard for sci-fi horror, such as Life, Pitch Black, and Inseminoid. Caliban is essentially Alien in comic form, ignoring that there already is a straight adaptation of Alien, not to mention numerous graphic novels set in the Alien universe. Caliban might seem like an oddly pointless exercise due to how derivative it seems, but the devil is in the details.

The titular Caliban is a spaceship that, while warping through space, ends up combining with an alien vessel. This is bad enough, since the crew of Caliban is so far away from any other human life that their ship will run out of oxygen before help can arrive. Worse, something from the alien ship is starting to pick off members of Caliban’s crew.

Garth Ennis’ writing is effective. Characters always have objectives that they’re working towards, and he keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Some people who die early never receive much in the way of characterisation, but the primary players are given effective beats establishing who they are. An effective lesbian romance at the core of the narrative not only provides Caliban with an emotional centre, it also differentiates the book from its primary inspiration.

Facundo Percio’s artwork is incredible. He knows how to place characters within environments, and the relatively cramped and industrial human ship contrasts nicely with the more exotic alien vessel. He’s good at keeping characters on-model while still allowing them to express a broad range of emotions. The level of consistency Percio is capable of is vital for the variety of grounded sci-fi horror that Caliban is supposed to be, and he delivers.

Caliban isn’t perfect. The book does have emotional stakes adding tension to the proceedings, but it’s difficult to create the kind of suspense film is capable of in the comic medium. It’s difficult to avoid thinking about that when reading a graphic novel so indebted to a specific horror movie.

Something that’s only a problem when reading Caliban in trade format is that the last stretch book has a lot of panels sinking into the gutter, which make some of the most climactic moments harder to parse than they should be.

Caliban isn’t a masterpiece of science-fiction or horror, but it’s good at being what it’s trying to be; a taut and self-contained graphic novel about people getting picked off in space. This should satisfy any fans of sci-fi horror.