Caspian Porter #3 is a comic written by Drew D. Lenhart with art by Juan Fleites. In this issue Caspian gets a crash course in how things work on Mars. There is a lot of fighting and arguing here paired with some lengthy explanations. The star of this tale is Caspian Porter, a young man that finds himself in the very distant past on an inhabited Mars. He is backed by a robot named Curbie and some other characters we met in earlier issues make an appearance. He has some fish-out-of-water vibes but he’s mainly brushing back against this new society he’s found himself in. The plot here starts with Caspian discovering that his wrecked spaceship is being ransacked so he sets out to stop it. There is a good amount of action and most of it takes place in one long scene. The intensity here is high during the fight but drops a bit when it’s all over. This comic has a lot of dialogue. More than a few pages have a large amount of words and though they read pretty smoothly it can slow the story down. This is an issue that features some excitement and world building that directly leads into the next installment.

            The art here has liberal use of shadows and a color palette that never gets too bright. This story takes place almost entirely in a forest/jungle on Mars so we have trees and vines on display and interacted with. The characters here are very expressive with the emotions being very clearly splayed across their faces. Faces have high amounts of detail thanks to the focus on wrinkles and realistic shadowing. There are dinosaurs here. The action here is all physical with no firepower on display. It reminds me a bit of something out of Fallout 3 with the weapon choices and attacks. For the most part the scenes are simple though a few panel transitions might have you confused. The outfits are either classic sci-fi themed or dystopian.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like sci-fi stories starring a man who is out-of-place and featuring time travel and different societies this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

PG-13.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Look, you must be new here. I’ll fill you in…”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snowyworks/caspian-porter-3-the-merciless-pirates-of-mars/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

*
*
*
*
*

Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 24

Violent Pages: 7, for 29% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 1

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 1

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 1

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”