Little green men and pacification of crowds
The first book of this comic book does not herald the multi-threaded plot, full of political negotiations, which emerges in the subsequent ones. It doesn’t even give the impression of serious science fiction, rather something light and fun. We see our planet and its inhabitants fighting for oil fields or fishing in cities that are flooded by the melting of glaciers. We also meet a young couple, humanoid aliens with green skin who serve in the army sent to Earth to help. The authors tell us about the Complex, a union that unites the developed races, but we perfectly understand that the point is that we should like these “Martians”.
As you can sense, the beginning of Rebirth did not grab me, but it gets more interesting and promising in the middle of the volume. The relations between the representatives of the Complex and the Earthlings are interesting: first sympathies emerge, but most of all mutual respect, born of joint work. It is possible that when we are the rescued, it is easier to avoid patronizing the weaker. While strangers seem to be mostly sane and noble for the time being, the human heroes who grow up to be the most important figures are energetic people, also very different from each other.
The plot of the first volume focuses on how it actually looks like to start a rescue mission in a situation when the Earthlings have no idea about the existence of other intelligent inhabitants of the cosmos. And they’re just terrified. We see the events taking place in the USA and France. One of the young spouses sent to our planet, Swann, works in America, working with an oil specialist. The second, Satie, is a medical professional who, together with a local scientist, will conduct research into an epidemic decimating humanity in crisis.
Everything is related
The complex, as the name suggests, is a complex system of mutual agreements, common interests, but also conflicts, including those over resources. Earth turns out to have something else to offer besides running out of fossil fuels, so also the “Rebirth” mission will be closely watched by politicians and entrepreneurs. In some respects, the developed races are very similar to each other – each hoping to win something for themselves. But this is not the end of the connections and coincidences, already in this volume it will turn out that the inhabitants of the planet Naka, where Swann and Satie come from, have something more than a rescue operation in common with us.
Revival is a francophone and it is impossible to read it without associations with Valerian and Laureline or other science fiction comics from there. As in Armada and the Christina and Mézières series, there is a theme of myriads of intelligent races inhabiting our galaxy, meeting on special councils and deciding the fate of (yet) unassociated planets. In the visual layer, it is a very classic work, futuristic alien clothes look like from the cinema of the 1960s – they are mainly tight-fitting suits, rarely also ceremonial robes. You will come across a pink, water planet and another jungle covered with similar reddish colors. You’ve seen all this before or read about it in a classic SF book when you were a kid.
The comic books of Fred Duval (script), Emem (drawings and colors) and Fred Blanchard (drawings) began to appear in 2018, but as I mentioned above, at the beginning you will think that it could as well be written at the end of the 20th century. He collects classic themes, including those related to political intrigue, but he does it well and in the middle of the volume he bounces off the stories known from the 90s in favor of a slightly earlier action. It contains a gallery of interestingly constructed characters, so I hope they will take the plot further in intriguing directions. Revivalis a story for lovers of classic science fiction from the border of sensation. Or at least that’s what the first three chapters promise. So far, Dargaud has published a total of four issues, the fifth is planned for September 2022, so we will wait more than a year for the second collection in Polish translation.
