Speedball's Geek Fest: Paula Garces presents Aluna

While at the Comic Con this year I got a few autographs from Paula Garces. She starred alongside Jesse Bradford in Clockstoppers and more recently appeared alongside Michael Chiklis. She was selling a package with her new comic book and an autographed photo. I read the comic book, Aluna, and here are my thoughts.

The book starts in 1520 with our protagonist, Aluna, running for her life from Spaniards. From the moment she gets off the boat to confront the Spaniards, she feels strange. While being chased she discovers she has power over nature (creating lightning and wind). At one point she is injured and flowers sprout up in the blood trail.

There’s a familiar feel to the character (think the X-Men’s Storm in 1520) but that gives me something to identify with. Also, in the midst of running for her life, a native saves her life, tells her that he knows she has power, then tries to kill her so he can take her power (the cliché is someone running in to tell her about her destiny and helping her escape then bonding with her).

The writing is a little clunky. The story begins with her on the run then backs up to show how she got there but there’s no reference to what country Aluna and the people on her boat are from – am I supposed to look it up on Wikipedia – or what their beef with the Spaniards are and who they’re killing. And besides Aluna, there aren’t any other developed characters. I don’t even know what Aluna is fighting for and having her leave the boat while everyone’s sleeping and run into a group of Spaniards on purpose without any weapons (she doesn’t know she’s powerful at that point) seems a ridiculous way to isolate her to stage a chase scene.

The art is pretty good. With the exception of a few panels, I understood what was happening (there are two panels where she trips the native to the ground where I had no idea what was happening until he hit the ground). But I do love the action scenes where, on one panel, there are several pictures of the same person tumbling through the air. I miss artists doing that – now you only see that kind of thing in a Flash panel.

Aluna isn’t a bad independent book and it may be worth getting #2 to see how the story develops. Hey, it’s a two issue mini-series so why not?