Delta 13 #3
Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Nat Jones
Letterer: Tom B. Long
Publisher: IDW
Review by Michael Farris, Jr.
In Delta 13 #3, the crew has overstayed their welcome on the mystery asteroid, so they try to get the heck out of there. After the strangely morphed crawler tries to take down the ship, they blast out of there and try to regroup. Wanting to get more information on the strange woman they brought on board, they instead find she is missing, so they go on a ship-wide search. The problem is that the woman appears to be the better hunter.
So here we have reached the penultimate issue for Delta 13, and I regret to inform you this is not one worth adding to the library. It had promise with the creative team and the sci-fi horror angle, but, ultimately, it failed to deliver. The best part of this series was the art, but the monotonous color tones should have clued me in to the storytelling method.
At front and center of the disappointment, I would argue, are the weak characters we’re riding along with in this space journey. None of them seem like they have a strong personality one way or the other. In the first issue, they all seemed to have the stereotypical qualities we get at the beginning of almost every modern horror movie.
In this issue, the lack of characterization was really drawn out. You want the characters to react to situations in their own unique way, but they all just seem dry and stiff. When the crawler latches itself to the ship to stop it, you would expect maybe a few exclamation points, but the characters all react like they’re announcing that breakfast on Tuesday will be toast and orange juice. When the murderous alien is sneaking throughout the ship, they all seem pretty chill about it. Maybe they had outstanding training to keep them calm in dire situations, but that’s a lot of grace to extend to an entire cast of bored space explorers.
Aside from this fault, there are others. First, it is not scary. You want horror to scare you, and this was meh, if I’m going to be generous. Second, it felt all too familiar. As the old saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, and apparently that extends to stories told millions of miles away from the sun as well.
Verdict: Skip it.
I briefly thought of making this a “wait and see,” but then I saw the series is ending in the next issue. I really did want to like this, but it is too familiar, too un-scary, and too dry to recommend.
