Anna Galactic. Christopher Baldwin (Writer & Artist). Good Port Publishing (2016)

A wonderfully engaging and enjoyable romantic science fiction story. On board a stranded ship on an alien planet Foxglove Muriel defies the rules to search outside the ship, actions which bring her into direct conflict with security officer Dilvan Ceylon. Foxglove is sure there is something suspicious about their circumstances, Dilvan is trying to enforce the rules. When they cross paths with Anna Galactic, a young woman who parents are arrested , all three flee the ship along with Anna's nannybot, Pewter. They start on a journey to locate the energy source required to power the flight of their ship off the planet and find that the planet is full of surprises and dangers. The action is smart, forceful and frequently very funny, the reveals are cunningly set up and the conclusion is smart and satisfyingly unexpected.
Christopher Baldwin has embraced the challenge of presenting an unknown world with great energy and thoughtful detail. The variety of N.E.B. (Non Earth Beings) is nicely set up so that there are a limited number of different NEB's and the interactions with each are significant. They way the human cast respond to them and the N.E.B.s respond to the humans is always revealing and develops the themes of the story with deft wit. There is always a nice edge of incomprehension that makes the responses and actions ambiguous, every interaction has multiple possibilities, there is a consistent variety in the outcomes to keep the reader engaged.
The journey is not just about the outcome, it is as much a process whereby the human cast get to demonstrate themselves and question what and why they act the way they do. Dilvan and Foxglove are mature adults with established life patterns that they fall back on in trouble. They are also self aware enough to consider different ways of responding even if they are not always able to follow a new path. Anna Galactic is a young woman who is emerging into a entirely new life where she has to be more confident in herself and decide if what she is doing is what she wants to do. This process is very happily complicated by the presence of Pewter whose advice is consistently sharp, awkward and voices the happily unheroic at every turn. This nicely undercuts the more tortured thinking of the human cast and ensures that it never becomes pretentious.
The art is wonderfully friendly and welcoming, the cast are very expressive and move through their context with physical weight and impact. The N.E.B.s are varied without every being too fantastic, they fit into their context as comfortably as the human cast do. Christopher Baldwin sets the imaginative bar very high, knitting crabs should be a ridiculous point that blows up the story, instead they are a terrific and in context entirely credible event.  The art is never angular, its softer lines are complemented perfectly by the colouring. It is slight muted and brings out the details of the expressions for the cast and the details of the physical context with subtle care.
There is a great deal going on in this story and the various elements never trip each other up, smart ustilisation of the story framework allows Christopher Baldwin to effectively and dramatically follow the human drama without ever sacrificing the genre requirements for action and close escapes.
Anna Galactic is thoughtful, smart science fiction, a deep pleasure.

One Way. Christopher Baldwin (Writer & Art). Good Port Publishing (2016)

A glorious and engaging romantic science fiction comic. A space ship is sent on a voyage to make the first human contact with an alien race. The crew are the most skilled and expendable in the fleet and it is clear from the outset that there is a strong possibility that it will be a one way voyage. Trouble starts early and continues right up to the unexpected, heartfelt and utterly satisfying conclusion.
Christopher Baldwin takes the genre standard for a disaster story, a eccentric group of people in a confined space becoming involved in an escalating disaster and gives it a big heart and lashings of humour.
The crew introduce themselves neatly as they start off on their journey, they have a nice range of characters in the cast and they strike off each other with great style and spark. When the first major incident occurs the cast start to reveal themselves and it is this process that continues through the rest of the story. Christopher Baldwin uses the genre staples with care and wit and at the same time carefully unwinds them to find the blood and bones of the humans hiding behind the roles they have given to themselves.
A deep pleasure of the story is the way that the plot, cast and context interact in unexpected and engaging ways. The confidence that Christopher Baldwin has in the story and cast is a joy, the pages are full of funny exchanges that never hide the cast behind gags, they continuously manage to be funny and revealing at the same time. Each cast member is given a change to engage the reader on tier own terms and to emerge as satisfyingly complicated.
The art is friendly and a pleasure to read, the figures are all slightly stiff particularly in a profile view, they all move naturally and relate to each other and their context very naturally. The strong personalities are expressed with eloquent body language, in particular the faces of the cast. They move through their context with force and physical weight that is vital in such a confined space. The spaceship feels right, enough detail to anchor the action firmly without being overdressed. There is a crucial sense of the length of the spaceship, the layers of the space that have different functions are are essentially belonging to different members of the crew, it feels like a working operation.
The muted colours catch the understated emotional tones of the story and bring out the details of the cast and context with strength and quiet force.
Christopher Baldwin has managed a very difficult story and made it look easy, a space opera that has the confidence to push really hard into the implications of the story idea and never backs down to easy ways out. Doing all this heavy lifting with laugh out loud humour and making it all look easy is a considerable achievement.
One Way is superb science fiction, a great comic and a luxurious pleasure to read.