Aron Warner’s Pariah #1 Review: Empty

In space, nobody can hear you wonder what Aron Warner and Philip Gelatt were thinking when they wrote “Pariah #1.” This is a comic that seems to be written by “Star Trek” nerds who only watch it for the “science.”

A group of teenagers are placed inside a space station that is apparently set up to be a death trap for them. When a piece of equipment fails it causes the temperature inside to slowly rise. It is a race against time to fix the problem or else they’d all die in the high heat. That is unless them not liking each other gets to them first.

The comic is a giant mess of things that take away any enjoyment. The first problem is the writing. We have a mixture of dialogue mixed in with first person narration. The narration seems unneeded for two reasons. One is that the narration adds nothing to the story. The second problem is that it suffers from telling instead of showing syndrome. Many of the things in the narration could’ve easily been written in as dialogue.

Another problem is that the comic reads like an episode of “Star Trek” where they talk about nothing but technobabble. It’s basically the characters explaining what everything does and what they plan to do about it. It’s all a bore.

Not to mention that this comic has some of the most annoying and unlikable teenagers ever. It is possible to write a story with teenagers and it’ll turn out great. This comic, on the other hand, paints the characters as shallow, unlikable and uninteresting. The reader shouldn’t feel bad if they can’t remember any of the characters’ names. They are that forgettable.

The quality of the art by Brett Weldele is also lacking. It looks like obvious pencil drawings with color added into it just to make it look like a comic. The blue color scheme is supposed to look like they are inside a cramped space station. The illusion is destroyed once you realize that an actual space station is much better lit than this.

“Pariah #1” is a poorly written, poorly drawn space drama wannabe that fails on all counts. There’s no drama, no interesting characters and, just like space, a whole lot of nothing filled with tiny specs here and there.