Feldman, Dennis

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

3 out of 5

(1 book)

Species

(Art by Jon Foster and Brian Kane)

The graphic novel adaption of Feldman's own script for the Natasha Henstridge-starring movie.  SETI beams a greeting message out into the cosmos and two decades later they receive a response from the depths of space.  The message contains the details of a new fuel source and the blueprint for combining human and alien DNA.  Operation Distant Call undertakes the combination and creates Sil, a seemingly human girl who grows at an exponential rate.  When they decide to destroy her, however, Sil escapes.  Whilst Project Director Xavier Fitch puts together a team of experts to hunt her down, Sil sets out to do what she is biologically programmed to do; propagate her species.

The movie 'Species' has a special place in my heart as the first one I, as a young teen, sat down with my friends and watched because it famously showed boobs (God bless you Natasha Henstridge).  But it's not a great movie.  It never quite delivers on the interesting premise which is a mix of alien invasion and police procedural.  This adaption hits all of the same beats and therefore all of the same potholes.  It's not outrageously bad, it's just not nearly as good as it could have been.

Where this adaption really disappointed me, however, is in its artwork.  It's simplistic and ugly and the colouring (by Rachelle Menashe) is just weird.  The whole point of the movie was its sensuality, both in the beauty of its lead actress and in the design of the alien version of Sil, created by the legendary H. R. Giger.  This book captures none of that and therefore loses out on the one tonal element that the film got right.

That said, there is one element of this adaption that far exceeds what we saw in the film.  Here we get a better exploration of Sil as a character and get a much more detailed look at the disturbing dreams that plague her.  She becomes a far more sympathetic character as we realise that she's not killing people because she's evil, she's doing it due to an unconscious biological compulsion.

3 out of 5

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