Writer: Jan Strnad
Pencils: Tommy Lee Edwards
Inks: Robert Campanella
Colorist: Melissa Edwards
Cover Art: Den Beauvais
Dark Horse seems pretty motivated in acquiring as many movie contracts as possible to bring more adventures into the world of comics. I really can’t complain, since they tend to choose quite a few movies I like! Granted this came out in 1997, but before delving into this I had actually seen Starship Troopers 3. That almost killed the beginning parts of this issue for me, because when they got on the topic of religion… I was like “oh no, not again”. Rest assured, it isn’t even remotely like that and this “Brute Creations” is actually a very awesome comic! I usually expect decently good work from Dark Horse and they definitely delivered this time.
Okay does everyone remember Rico’s teacher named Rasczak? Yeah, he’s the guy with one arm that was in charge of the Rough Necks before Rico took over! Anyway, this comic essentially stars him and we get a nice little adventure with him, very awesome. Basically what happened is a group of Mormon’s tried to make their own way in the galaxy and colonized a world inside the Arachnid Quarantine Zone. Some theory that God would allow them to coexist with nature… or whatever. Anyway, in order to be a citizen you have to take classes to meet the requirements so they sent Rasczak out to their colony to educate their youth. As you can expect, the bugs attack and Rasczak tried to talk some sense into the people, but they all ran for the safety of the church. Rasczak knew they’d all be slaughtered, so at that point he just starts blasting a path to his ship to get off this crazy planet. It definitely makes a very interesting statement about religion and God not really saving people who don’t try to save themselves. I personally liked it a lot and I thought it was a really good twist to what I would expect to see.
This is going to be weird, but I’m going to start with the cover. This cover definitely gets our attention, why? Probably because that’s Denis Beauvais’ art and if you remember he did an absolutely phenomenal job on Series Two of the Aliens comics. Unfortunately the art inside the issue isn’t done by him. I don’t want to knock Edwards, because his art in this issue was pretty good, but it’s just not on the same wavelength as Beauvais’ air brushed work in the Aliens issues. He really did set some very high standards for us! Edwards’ art is pretty decent overall, I think he managed to capture the right feel for Starship Troopers and this was only enhanced by Melissa Edwards’ color work.
If this is any indicator of what we can expect from future Starship Troopers comics, I think we’ll all be pretty happy readers! The story line definitely plays into that perverse cynical feel we’d expect from this series. Not to mention it has a good degree of action that keeps us engaged. A very well written issue and I can’t wait for more!
Overall Rating: 4/5