• The Tribute by Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette (Titan Comics, 2023)

Review by Warner Holme: Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette’s The Tribute. While the team’s previous Snowpiercer was a very terrestrial post-apocalyptic story, this one is instead a spacefaring bit of military science fiction.

Humanity is in a losing war with a fairly unknowable force it simply refers to as “others”. On pretty much every front they are losing fast. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Juan Gaviero and a team of soldiers and scientists find themselves on a backwater planet with a pair of suns, trying to understand something that might change the course of the war. But even if it is found the scientists and politicians may not be ready for it, or understand it any more than they do their enemy.

With elements taken from military sci-fi throughout, like most good examples of the genre it splits into other territory quite often. Speculative science fiction, political maneuvering, and even elements of cosmic horror slip in and out of this narrative easily. None feel exceptionally tacked on, and when read the developments largely stem from understanding outcroppings of each other. Psychic powers play a role in ways involving the terrestrial as well as stranger entities. Extraplanetary life is a major plot element, and the fact that humanity aren’t good to those they have power over is as important to it as the challenges faced by humanity. Environmentalism also a large role, dealing with devastation for not only the biosphere of one world but potentially many others. Indeed even past mistakes are touched in, like the need to monitor certain ancient power plants.

The characters in the book are slightly hit or miss. A fair number of figures are fairly stock, with human antagonists feeling particularly clear in that regard.  Others are more nuanced, Gaviero and the scientist Weaver fitting this best. This is arguably because of the fact they spend the most time on page and as a result have more time for nuance, although in Gaviero’s case it is complicated by the personal changes and transformations he is going through pulling him into a place that isn’t easily comparable to the human experience.

The art is nice, somewhat reminiscent of the work in old pulps or classic sci-fi comics without spilling into feeling truly old fashioned. The colors are often harsh and vibrant, while appropriate to each of the situations where they become strongly dominated by a single hue. Others are more varied. Showing quick clean looks at futuristic environments and effective focuses on strange alien beings which are knowable. Those which are “others” meanwhile get even more bizarre, one well illustrated using little more than a splash of color.

Any fans of this creative team should definitely check the book out, but not expect anything like the cold world of the last series. As for other readers, recommendations wouldn’t be simply based on the genres they have worked in before. This is a book setting a distant future, but one that deals with individual loss of humanity and the question of morality separate thereof. Fans of old school science fiction will likely enjoy it, transhumanism and all, but this doesn’t put it outside the interest of newer readers.