Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced readers copy. All opinions are honest and my own.

Goodreads Synopsis: 

NEW SERIES!

Meet Sarah, an astronaut traveling from dead planet to dead planet, talking to the ghosts of dead worlds... as she fights to discover the secret that's killing the universe. But Death doesn't give up its secrets so easily, and as she's hunted from planet to planet, Sarah struggles to maintain the trust of her crew and her own sanity in the endless ocean of lives. Every world has a story, and if she can find the secret tying them all together, she can save Earth from being the next world to die.

From THE JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE and GROOT writer Jeff Loveness and AMERICAN MONSTER and ANIMOSITY: THE RISE artist Juan Doe, comes the chilling, epic new series that will be sure to appeal to fans of ARRIVAL, INTERSTELLAR and THE EXPANSE.



My Review:

The story begins with a group of people in space suits on a recently extinct dead planet. One of the astronauts has a unique ability to kind of see the life of the other beings that used to roam the planet. They're chasing a serial killer. This book is unique and eye catching, using a lot of bright colours in the beautiful art, and the story is really interesting. I'm really glad I got to read it. Definitely check it out if you get a chance, it's a super quick and interesting read. 
Thanks for reading!
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

'World Reader Vol. 1' by Jeff Loveness with art by Juan Doe is a somber story told by someone who usually writes comedy. The result is a decent enough story.

Sarah is an astronaut with a weird gift: she can talk to the dead. She is on a mission to find a new home for the Earth, and while there are signs of habitation, the life on the worlds is gone. Sarah speaks to the former inhabitants and finds that one being seems to be behind it all. She wants to warn her crewmates, but they don't believe in her gift, or why she is even on the mission. It's up to Sarah to possibly save us all.

The story is told with minimal words. While we do get to know a little of Sarah's motivation, the rest of the crew are either setpieces or broad stereotypes. The story is good, if a bit depressing, but what shines here is the gorgeous art by Juan Doe, which is complemented by a bold color palette that makes everything a treat to look at. The story had a predictable twist, but offered further mysteries that kept me interested.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Aftershock Comics, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Ok so been a while since I have done a review, but I had the pleasure of receiving this comic through net galley and this right here is amazing. The story line drew me in just from the description alone. The illustrations were so beautiful and just added more depth to story.

Summary: Sarah an astronaut is traveling from dead planet to dead planet while she fights to discover the secret that's killing the universe. But Death doesn't give up its secrets so easily, and as Death hunts her from planet to planet Sarah tries to keep her sanity and trust her crew, but it gets harder for her.

My rating:🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves sci-fi especially cosmic sci-fi at that. I would love to read more and know what happens next.

All the worlds the explorers have found are dead. Sarah communes with the dead. She’s a psychic astronaut, or a space ghost whisperer. But on the most recent dead planet, she discovers that the world killer has inhaled all the ghosts. One of the ghosts calls the world killer the faded man. Why he wants to suck up everyone’s soul isn’t quite clear. Maybe they taste good.

Anyway, the captain doesn’t like Sarah because she isn’t military or a scientist, and that’s supposed to be interesting. Sarah has a sad history, and that’s supposed to be interesting. Eventually intrepid Sarah needs to carry on the mission herself by stealing a lifeboat, which apparently can travel from planet to planet with no problem. And then she makes out with one of her team members, which is supposed to be interesting. None of that is interesting.

Sarah somehow confronts the world killer, and a story that was confusing until that point becomes absolutely impenetrable. I won’t give away the big reveal. Instead, I’ll just note that it’s a stupid reveal. It make so little sense that the space ghost thing almost seems plausible by comparison.

The art is sort of simple and blocky when it’s not just a bunch of swirling finger painting. Not at all appealing.

This was a highly interesting graphic novel with amazing art. It's time to explore new worlds but one thing the scientists are keeping secrets is that all the uninhabited planets used to have intelligent life. And only one member of the crew can solve the mystery of why these new life forms are dying out.

The artwork is this comic was nicely done, I enjoyed the style a lot. I did think it could use a bit more details, just to give us a better look at all those different worlds.

The plot sounds interesting enough, however it does lack somewhat. The plot is quite thin and I read to whole thing in about half an hour. I think this shows that the story isn’t complex at all, and there weren’t too many details to look at.

I really liked the message at the end of those volume and that did save the whole comic a bit. I also liked Sarah as a character, even though you didn’t learn that much about her. I liked the storyline about Paul the most, and think that part is why I like Sarah as our main character. I’m interested to see if there will be a second volume and what that would entail.

Future Earth is on its last legs from all of the man-made pollution. A secret team of astronauts have been sent to a group of planets to investigate signs of alien civilizations. All the worlds they've found so far are void of life. Among the astronauts is a psychic who can speak to the dead of the world. Now she must unravel the mystery of what happened to these civilizations.

A quite liked this dramatic tale from a typically comedic writer. I've hated what I've seen of Juan Doe's superhero art. (His work on Wolverines still haunts me.) The way he draws faces typically look like a balloon with a face on it. However, his art works quite well with the ethereal and surreal nature of the book. The tale itself reminds me of classic sci-fi novels of the 50's and 60's.

This is what you get if you replace the B-movie horror in Prometheus the movie with some actual forethought. A psychic is tagged on to a mission from Earth to look at lots of terraformable worlds, that all have extinct civilisations on, and begins to demand it of herself that she hunt down a kind of galactic serial killer. The ending is a little too wishy-washy (I had to read it twice to get anything from it at all) but it's a pretty good book - if only it hadn't lost the immediacy with which it opened. The artwork is ever commendable, although more could have been done at times to make people and character stand out; certainly the colourist has had a field day. I can see this connecting with the right audience for intelligent sci-fi - what I can't admit to is really loving it, and what I can't at all see is a reason for a volume 2. Still, three and a half stars for a fresh look at life as seen through the lens of billions of deaths.

World Reader is a new series from Aftershock Comics, and is the brain child of Jeff Loveness (Groot, Nova, Jimmy Kimmel Show) and Juan Doe (Animosity: The Rise, Iron Man: Legacy). It is a wonderful blend of stunning artwork and a different sort of space exploration story than we’ve typically been told. I originally picked World Reader up because of the artwork on the cover; it immediately caught my eye and made me want to know more about what was going on inside.
If you’re anything like me, you love space exploration stories, but sometimes get tired of hearing the same old story again and again, with only slight variations thrown into the mix. That isn’t World Reader. It’s so different from everything else I’ve read. The main character, Sarah, isn’t a typical astronaut, in fact the only reason she got assigned to go on this mission in the first because is because she can talk to ghosts. Yes, you did in fact read that correctly. Sarah can read the memories of the ghosts around her, and somebody on the space program decided that made Sarah vital to the mission.
As it turns out though, that higher up wasn’t far off. Every planet Sarah and her team have gone to has been dead. Or more accurately, the aliens on it are now dead. Sarah takes it upon herself to discover the cause, even when her team lead goes out of his way to try and stop her. The whole set up is vastly intriguing – how did Sarah get this ability set? Why are all the aliens dead? Is Earth next? Why is her commander trying to stop her? These are some of the questions circling in my head while reading (which I did in one sitting, it was so good).
I won’t give away the ending, that’s for you to read, but I will say that I think the series was strongest during its buildup phase. I do think it got a little bit ahead of itself; I would have loved to have seen the first volume stretched out into two, maybe even three, full volumes instead of just the one (though I do hope they continue the series). The ending didn’t give me the same level of satisfaction that the mystery being unraveled did, though I liked that part enough where I’m actually okay with it, in an odd way.
I seriously can’t get over how stunning the artwork in World Reader is. I’m just going to say it; Juan Doe is a genius, plain and simple. The artwork was just so evocative – you could see the ghosts hurting, and how Sarah’s emotions bled out onto her face will just gut you at times. The whole thing was wonderfully done, and supported the plot amazingly well (I honestly think I wouldn’t have liked the plot as much as I did had another artist been teamed with Loveness).
I sincerely hope Loveness and Doe continue working on this project together, and if not I hope they start another one together. The work they put out as a team is outstanding, and it’d be a shame for them to waste that. I hope to see more from them in the future!

What a beautiful book, the artwork and use of colour in this is really outstanding and the highlight of the book as a whole. That being said I did like the story, especially in some of the turns it took, but felt it could have used just a little more explanation to really bring it to life. The ending was actually quite beautiful and moving.

This futuristic sci-fi story with fantasy elements has an astronaut who can communicate with ghosts, searching for the end of life across galaxies. Sarah is not believed to be what she is by her team, even though their mission is apparently to find out what is causing all these dead planets across the universe. The answers lead us to a partly theological discussion of what is death and what is life, and what those mean on a cosmic scale.

The artwork on this graphic novel is beautiful, although sometimes it felt like it lacked imagination when it came to depicting all the different lifeforms on the other planets. Sure, if you go by the ending ‘s reveal, it would make sense for them all to be similar, but I still expected a bit more variety, ya know. I also felt the book was a little confused on what it wanted the central conflict to be – the Death stalking these planets or human colonization? Like, make up your mind, or maybe split those stories into different arcs than have a confusing chapter filled with both.

Overall, I would give it 3.5 stars. It had a good story, plotholes notwithstanding and some beautiful artwork.

Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Diamond Book Distributors, via Netgalley.

"We've always wondered if we were alone. The naïve answer was "yes". The hopeful answer was "no". But now I know the truth. We weren't alone...but we are now." Opening with a melancholy vista of a dead alien city, this initially feels like a rare comic in going for an Olaf Stapledon vibe, as one psychic astronaut strives to know, remember and understand the many worlds doomed before we even knew them. And eventually it comes back around to that, and the ultimate question of whether the game of life is worth the candle. But in between there's a frustrating morass of fairly rote human drama, a red herring which seems to be Galactus minus the natty hat, and an anti-colonialist angle which sort of meshes with the rest of it but feels distinctly rushed. A frustrating book, in other words - but not bad at all for a comedy writer's first foray into drama. And as it concludes regarding life in general, in the end the good outweighs the bad.

The concept of this book is fantastic-- an astronaut that is able to "read" the dead of the worlds they visit to learn how civilizations that once were died out. The execution is also quite good, but there were a few things I struggled with. Specifically, I felt like I had a hard time following and connecting with the emotional arc of the protagonist and even more so with a romantic sub-plot that, to me, at least, felt like it kind of came out of nowhere and then kind of just stopped mattering in the final volume or two of the book. I also had trouble understanding why the main character got so upset about something that served as a bit of a plot twist near the end as the details of the twist seemed fairly straightforward and generally positive as I understood it.
Anyway, a fun, unique read with good art, just a few things that could have used some polishing on the writing end of things. I did enjoy it and feel it's worthwhile to fans of sci-fi with a bit of a fantastic bent.

This comic drew my attention because of two things. The cover and the title. The cover shows us a very interesting color palette. You don’t very often see such bold orange/red on the cover for a science-fiction story. And the title is of course very interesting because of the word reader. I knew this wasn’t going to be about a bookish reader, but regardless it still caught my attention.

The idea that there is life on other planets is of course mighty interesting and still something that keeps us busy in real life at times. Will we ever find it? In this comic however many of these alien civilizations are already dead. Our main character can read the planet’s past through connecting with the ghosts of the aliens, something not everyone believes she can do. Sounds like a great solid start, right?

In the end I think the execution of this comic let itself down. I got the vibe this is a dystopian type of setting. While this is set in space, our planet apparently isn’t very well off. It is set into our future but however and what exactly our planet’s state is or what caused it, no idea. I missed that to be able to believe some of the side character’s reasons of decisions.

As this is a first volume I was honestly expecting this to be an overarching arc. However this was wrapped up in this volume. It felt rushed to me. I think there was room to go into details, to deepen a lot of things out. Like the supposed romance in this book that felt like it came out of nowhere. But also more on the aliens. More on everything, really.

The art throughout the comic was solid. Like the cover there was some very interesting use of color that was grabbing. Some of the full page illustrations were gorgeous. And I think they were clearly the strong point of this whole comic.

An interesting concept! It vaguely reminded me of one of the sub-plots in Thor: Ragnarok!

A creative story, with art that stands out a bit from other comics artwork. The coloring is really striking. Some of the writing was almost poetic. And I laughed at a few parts.

But the main thing that hits you is the commentary on us. I think that all good stories make us think about who we are and how we live our lives. And it’s a deep story. About now. About then. About before. About after.

<i>In the end, God’s just another painter…looking at his work…knowing he could have done better.</i>

It’s a beautiful story, really.

Worth reading.

gorgeous graphics and very cool story. While this isn't my normal genre, the cover intrigued me and it didn't let me down at all

A great sci-fi graphic novel about world destroying. What's not to love?