Review by Frank Plowright

Outpost Zero is a town with a self-sustaining environment constructed to travel through space as an enclosed atmospheric dome until it located a planet able to sustain life. Instead it crash-landed on a frozen planet, and the current crop of teenagers about to be assessed to determine their allocated job have only known life in the artificial environment. Those now maintaining the outpost weren’t trained for the task and lack materials, and there’s an awareness of existence being fragile. By the end of the opening chapter, exactly how fragile is going to be severely tested by an existential threat.

Sean Kelley McKeever, once plain Sean McKeever, is delivering something akin to the SF disaster movie, but very much character based. The initial focus is on a group of teenagers, but Alea becomes the key personality. She wants to become part of the discovery team like her parents, who venture outside the dome to search for any means of escape or hope, but life throws curveballs and her mission becomes something else. McKeever’s good at ensuring each time we think we have someone worked out, they’ll do something that defies our conceptions, with Alea the sole exception. Yes, she’ll surprise, but there are no big secrets, while her opposite is a loner carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

After the first chapter much has changed, and artist Alexandre Tefenkgi skilfully sells the deception of life in the outpost. It looks like any small American town, but like so much else, that’s artificially maintained. It’s worth bearing in mind that Outpost Zero was his first major work, yet there’s no indication of that from the confident storytelling, ambitious designs and emotionally strong personalities. These pages could be the work of an industry veteran.

Although the major characters are all teenagers and the brightness gives this the look of a young adult series, it’ll take a precocious thirteen year old to pick between what’s said and what isn’t and the prevailing emotional tension. By the end Alea’s persistence has unearthed a secret, and the title of the continuation Follow it Down is part of that.

Alternatively, it’s in a slightly smaller format, but Outpost Zero: The Complete Collection delivers what the title promises, and as McKeever and Tefenkgi are producing such a page turner why not invest in that?