Review: Aldebaran (1994-1998) by Léo

7/10

Aldebaran (1994-1998) is a science fiction epic, a space opera, that stretches out over a series of 5 volumes that isn’t all that long. The omnibus edition reads as a single graphic novel. It’s one of the most successful SF series coming out of France in the past decades; written in the 1990s, and then spawned a couple of follow-up series – Betelgeuse, Antares and more – that continue to this day in the 2020s. All are written and drawn by Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira (drawing as Léo), a Brazilian comics artist. It’s his life’s work.

Comparisons are made with Frank Herbert’s Dune, because of the interstellar setting and the focus on ecology, but that is where the comparison ends. Aldebaran’s storytelling isn’t focused on royal families but on the travels and adventures of a group of main characters. And through these travels, Léo slowly expands his universe. So, to start: Mark Sorensen, Kim Keller and their families live in a tiny fishing village in an environment that could easily be Mediterranean or Caribbean, were it not for many strange animals around them. The sea is full of big scary alien monsters. Birds are all weird too. They live on an alien planet, a century after a wave of space colonisation from Earth, but Earth has gone silent and Mark and Kim live a low-tech lifestyle. So, think Leo’s homeland Brazil but with alien beasts. The story opens with the day that some monster from the depths comes and destroys their village.

Then a series of adventures begins.

While Mark and Kim travel, we get little hints about the world beyond their little fishing village and things aren’t cozy out there. There’s a ruling class of lordly priests, music is forbidden, journalism is tightly controlled… a lot of authoritarianism. And all the alien creatures are wonderful, mysterious and creepy. In a storyline similar to Lem’s Solaris (1961), two biologists try to communicate with a giant, shapeshifting sea creature.

Mark Sorensen, Kim and Nelly Keller, they’re teenagers and stubborn, hotheaded and tend to dramatise stuff, but the writer is totally aware and in control of how he’s writing his characters. Mark and Kim have their deeper layers. They don’t always understand their own feelings and they drive each other to despair and then try to talk things out. They come to realisations about their own behaviour and feel shame or anger. There’s good character growth and I enjoyed following them, for the most part. Truth be told, Mark can be a bit of an annoying, self-centered teenager, and seeing him struggling with his pride and feelings of attraction and inadequacy is… recognisable but cringey too.

It’s a comic that you have to give a bit of time to get into. It’s not an American comic with dynamic superhero action. The story moves slowly, there’s lots of talking, the sci-fi elements pop up slowly over time, and you’ll probably need to get used to the characters and to the way Léo draws his faces, which are a bit static. The alien creatures are much more interesting to look at. I began to tire of his drawing style towards the end. By the final volumes, the story began to feel a little thin. A little spread out over too many pages and not very innovative. There is a subplot about an authoritarian government and one about visitors from Earth and it all gets solved at the end. Mark and Kim never leave the planet, and often find themselves in their underwear.