Full dark, no stars.

I, like pretty much everyone else in the world, love this series. It is one of the few books I have ever pre-ordered, but my mind is like a sieve, so I was very surprised when it suddenly arrived in my mailbox.

Vaughn and Staples’ Volume 7 is dark. This is a dark series – there is always something going wrong for Alana and Marko, but this one felt particularly hopeless. It starts off on a high note – the family is reunited and expanded, developing a close relationship with another refugee family on a war torn comet. We also get to revisit some characters that we haven’t seen in a while, such as Sophie, Lying Cat and The Will, which was great. However, there is underlying tension in nearly all the relationships, and Hazel’s commentary speaks forbodingly of potential and possibilities.

I don’t really want to get into specifics for fear of spoiling the story for anyone who happens upon this review, but the only note I left on the post when I started this in April was that this one felt similar to Empire Strikes Back. Everything goes wrong, hope seems lost, and important people have been lost. There are a few humorous notes in the book, but this one shows how all the hope and faith and love are not enough to protect anyone.

As always, Fiona Staples’ art is gorgeous – the colours are great and the facial expressions on the characters are so evocative. The characters are complicated and weird and seem fully thought out. It’s great, as always.