Delta 13 #1 Review

Unlucky 13

Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Nat Jones
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Release Date: May 23, 2018
Cover Price: $3.99

I was really looking to forward to reading this one as it appeared to appeal to my sci-fi tendencies,
sadly though I was left with a comic of where I was trying to work out which character was which, a
dull color palette with a not so compelling story, which I will try unpick.


The book starts with the cold open of placing the reader directly in what would seem to be a routine
fact-finding mission for the crew of Tetra478, in the middle of dropping one of their crawlers onto
the surface of what I believe is an asteroid, at this point, it looks to be job done. Once they decide
they are on their way home and having a few laughs at who the better scrabble player is, it
transpires that they are on a collision course with the mother of all asteroids which has not been
documented, ever, apparently.

Once the crew realize there is no way to slow down they take cover
in a tunnel (one of many in the asteroid), and decide to send out a crawler which faces off against a
wall that looks like to be evidence of life. I honestly wish there was more to it than that but it felt
very much like an opening act, which is understandable as it is the first issue, but there were no
captivating characters, the story is as generic as they come, and the art I didn’t think was very
strong. A couple of characters looked exactly the same,

Along with the one color scheme, the whole book felt very flat. It should be noted that the inside
the spaceship the feeling of claustrophobia creeps in, which is thanks to the art, and the outside, in
space, certainly captures the vastness. I feel the color completely let this down, I get the effect they
were going for but it is not executed very well and when the alarms go off, it is just the change of
one color.

Bits and Pieces:

Given the marketplace for sci-fi comics currently and Dark Horse have sewn up the rights to Alien
and produced the fantastic Dead Orbit recently it would be hard to justify continuing with this. This is
a different feel, but the atmosphere is not produced to give the cerebral vibe and there was simply
not enough going on through the characters or in the plot to reel you in. Hopefully, this can pick up in
subsequent issues.

4/10