Zeb Larson reviews Caliban #6…
The penultimate issue of the best new horror sci-fi series of 2014 is here! GARTH ENNIS turns the silent and stale corridors of space into a walking nightmare for the few remaining crewmen of the Caliban mining starship. As creeping death rounds every corner, the truth of Karien’s rampage begins to unfold. But it’s too late for salvation as the horror of the unknown becomes a miserable companion to those that cling to life on the doomed freighter. No one is safe in dead space.
This was never going to end well, was it? Caliban has been unremittingly dark throughout, and in the penultimate issue we’re treated to some truly grim scenes. This is a good penultimate issue, leaving us with very little hope for a happy ending and a truly frightening final shot. Still, I’m wondering whether Garth Ennis will be throwing any curve balls about the nature of the entity in Karien. I’m going to be discussing spoilers up ahead, so read on at your own discretion.
San and Nomi talk briefly as the issue begins about their feelings for each other, and San explains that she hadn’t made a move toward Nomi for fear of scaring her away. We then see a flashback of Nomi arriving at the Caliban and San showing her around. San confides that she had a more prestigious assignment but opted out of it because she preferred to be a worker bee in the engine room. In the present, San’s plan for taking down Karien is to shoot him full of the chemicals he’s been injecting himself with. It’s a good plan, but as they move through the alien chamber they see evidence of further alien autopsies and tampering. Karien gets the drop on them and brutally disembowels San in front of Nomi. Karien then speaks with Nomi and tells her that she has nowhere left to run. He evades questions about his true nature, except to say that they have work to do.
Damn, that death scene was a difficult one to watch. It always seemed like San would die protecting Nomi, given how many times she’s said she would keep Nomi safe. Protecting is the key part of that last idea, because in another writer’s hands her death would somehow defeat Karien as well. Garth Ennis has given us none of that. Her death really pulls the rug out from under the reader and makes it clear that Nomi has no kind of protection left. She has nowhere to run and nobody to help her. Yet Karien needs her to get the ship moving, which I suspect will be the chief action in next issue.
Parts of the action in this issue felt oddly brief, partly because of the flashback and a lot of dialogue between our two survivors. Those few pages where you think that the two might find a way out of this are the best part, because when it comes crashing down it’s that much more painful. Because of the events of this issue, Garth Ennis has us right where he wants us. From my perspective, I can’t see any kind of happy ending for Nomi, or even a plausible way for her to get out of this. The best she can do would be to somehow destroy the ship and herself along with it, because the alternative is presumably going to be very bad for our species.
The artwork in this issue was great. Facundo Percio got to spend some time with lots of aliens, and they’re all grizzly and fascinating to look at. It’s that last image of Karien though that is really hard to look at, now that he is even less human than he was before. I’m sure the similarities to an angel are entirely planned, because what we have here is an angel of death. Next issue should be interesting not only because it’s the finale, but because it’s the first real chance to spend some time alone with the alien and see just what it wants. As ghoulish and frightening as that sounds, it should be fascinating.
Zeb Larson
Originally published September 14, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
