Advance Order Recommendation: WHERE STARSHIPS GO TO DIE (AfterShock)

EDITOR’S NOTE: One thing I’ve learned as a fan of various genres in comics offerings as well as a supporter of smaller, indie publishers - - - you need to place advance orders for the books you want to read or risk the chance that your local shop won’t have a copy when you visit. I’ll have more to say on this subject later.  

    I’m grateful for the digital advance review copies that some publishers send me. In the future, I’m going to try to spotlight some books I think are worthy of attention before it’s too late for interested readers to place an advance order. 

    Although I just received this advance digital review copy on Thursday afternoon the order deadline is rapidly approaching. If you’re interested in WHERE STARSHIPS GO TO DIE, I suggest you place an order with your local shop and/or use the Comic Hub app to do so by Sunday morning May 22 at the latest. 

WHERE STARSHIPS GO TO DIE #1 of 5 by Mark Sable and Alberto Locatelli (AfterShock Comics, in comic shops on June 08 2022) Like ASTRONAUT DOWN, another recent AfterShock title, this is a necessary set-up issue, but it proceeds at a rapid-fire pace that captures your attention. Things are going to get crazy from this point forward. While this shares a general outer space theme with ASTRONAUT DOWN, WHERE STARSHIPS GO TO DIE is a completely different story: a suspense-filled exploration of undersea salvage operations with unearthly undertones - - a neat blend of adventure and horror.

     Here’s how AfterShock Comics describes Where Starships Go to Die:

Point Nemo – the farthest oceanic point on earth from any landmass. A spacecraft graveyard where rockets and satellites can be safely ditched on the ocean floor. In a near future ravaged by climate change, an African astronaut teams with an Indian shipping magnate to mount a dangerous salvage mission to recover the wreck of humanity’s first interstellar starship. But what they find is beyond their worst nightmares.   

     Where Starships Go to Die is the latest AfterShock work for writer Mark Sable, whose previous credits for the publisher include Miskatonic and Godkillers: War on Terror. It’s Sable’s first collaboration with artist Alberto Locatelli, and Locatelli’s first work for AfterShock.

     In a statement announcing the new series, Sable described the fictional and real-world inspirations for Where Starships Go to Die:

“Movies like James Cameron’s The Abyss, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Ridley Scott’s Alien and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar were all influential in establishing the tone we’re going for.  But I was also inspired by the real-life Point Nemo, and the idea of “berserker probes” – theoretical, self-replicating spacecraft created by alien civilizations to find and wipe out any life they consider a threat.  They’ve been offered as a very scary answer to the Fermi Paradox, the question of why we haven’t encountered intelligent life – because berserker probes have killed them all…and we’re next.”