This would have been better as an actual novel. You miss out on a lot of explanations and world building that are necessary to the plot. ( )

“Alien Bounty Hunter” is a new and exciting comic featuring a man they call Madsen, an extremely good bounty hunter. Although it begins with a base in Alaska being compromised by an alien specimen who’s used it’s own bacteria to create a bioweapon inside it’s own arm, and is clearly dangerous. They need someone to come in and capture it before anything happens, and that person is Madsen, after he learns he will not be getting paid for his work with human bounty hunting anymore. The alien, however, is not what anyone expects.

Check out my full review here!

https://radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/alien-bounty-hunter-volu... ( )

Even though the plot is really straight forward, I quite enjoyed this bit of brain candy. It was easy to get into the tale and that’s partly because the characters, for the most part, are archetypes. Ben Madsen was easy to sympathize with. He’s bullied into taking this job to hunt down and retrieve a specific alien (Nyx). There’s a very large alien prison hidden under Alaska. It’s a strange world all of it’s own divided into different sectors. Each sector is run by a malevolent powerful alien and they don’t take kindly to a mercenary human running amok!

One of my favorite characters was the Reaper. She’s got her finger on the pulse of the alien prison and for her own reasons gives Ben some much needed assistance. I think more could have been done with her character but that might come in the next volume.

There’s all sorts of aliens in this story; they aren’t just uniform baddies that Ben takes out willy nilly. Don’t get me wrong; our hero does his fair share of removing aliens hell bent on killing him. Yet there are still individual aliens with their own motives in helping or hindering Ben.

Also, there’s some conspiracy going on with the Coalition, which maintains the prison. They had some sort of deal with a technologically advised alien species and now Ben is caught in the crosshairs of that deal. Ben’s computer guy (Brooks) works from the outside to dig up info but getting info into the prison and to Ben is quite difficult.

Ben has a solid relationship with Rita, an older woman suffering from cancer who acted as Ben’s granma or elderly aunt while he was growing up. Throughout the story we get flashbacks to Ben’s childhood and how Rita influenced it. I hope we see more of her in Volume 2.

The tale does leave us on a cliffhanger, so I hope Volume 2 comes out soon. I’d like to see more depth to all the characters and perhaps a bit more history on the prison to make it more believable. All told, 4/5 stars.

The Artwork: The artwork is gorgeous! I love the images of Reaper on her bike, of this wicked alien (Miasma?) and her tentacled sidekick, and those tiger-like beasties going after Ben. Nyx is also drawn very well, having an androgynous cast to him. The lettering was nicely done too, some sections having different colors which helped me keep straight who was talking. I also liked how little word bubbles with ‘alien words’ were used to show that a tech translator was working. At the end of the volume are the various covers for the individual issues which I spent some quality time admiring. 5/5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley. ( )