Barbarella #2

Writer: Mike Carey

Artist: Kenan Yarar

Colorist: Mohan

Published by: Dynamite

There is something extremely fun reading about a new-ish world that I have yet to explore and finding out all of its strengths as well as all of its flaws. This world that Barbarella inhabits clearly fits that bill and it has been quite a nice experience up to date for all of its awesome scifiness.

As we left off in the last issue, our heroine Barbarella had just escaped from one of Parosia’s (the world she crash landed on) prisons with her cellmate Jury. As they are making their escape, Carey does an admirable job in fleshing out the world of Parosia through narrative explanation as well as simply seeing the world through a new pair of eyes, those of Barbarella. This is sci-fi at its best: when a singular hero is thrust into an unknown world and gets to see it for the first time.

As Barbarella and Jury progress through this issue,we the reader get to learn about Parosia’s belief system, its impact on how the world evolves (or devolves really), how the populace views the religious figureheads and finally, how the opposition to this ruling class operate.

Through all this, Barbarella is but a passenger on this journey. She may have found an ally in Jury, but she soon finds out that the organization (or rebellion mouvement that she is a part of), are not exactly what they seem at first - and they may not be as “right” as she thought at first glance.

At first, I thought this series might have been all fluff, relying mostly on name recognition over substance, but Carey and Yarar are slowly changing my mind in that regard.