Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Creator Matt Kindt will already have a lot of readers grabbing issues of the limited comic-book series ‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’ thanks to its dramatic title. At least that’s how I ended up downloading this 3-issue limited series on my Kindle. The artwork of a scared journalist wearing a war zone Press vest on the cover adds to the theatrics and generates ample curiosity.
‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’ follows Robin, a seasoned reporter, headed to a hostile yet habitable universe called the ‘Terminus’ with a team of hardened US Marines. Within seconds of entering the alien planet, almost the entire squad is brutally massacred by strange armed beings, except for the lucky Robin. Unsure of her survival, she begins writing in her journals about the bizarre new universe, its mysterious gods, and an all-too-familiar oppressive system that divides those with power from those without. Living on strange scraps and suspicious “water,” Robin hopes to make it back home and tell her hard-to-believe tale of surviving the violent, volatile Terminus.
Issue #1 of ‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’ quickly establishes its larger-than-life sci-fi premise, throwing protagonist Robin into the chaos and horrors of the new planet. She watches, mortified, as aliens furiously kill those around her, and barely makes it out alive with another US Marine. The other two issues track her efforts to stay alive in the overwhelming landscape of hostile aliens and ancient structures, some of which house god-like beings. Now and then, Robin encounters giant warrior-like statues on Terminus, as if she is in ancient Rome.
The artwork of ‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’ is fantastic; it has an old-school, pulp-fiction science-fiction illustration style. The color scheme keeps changing from page to page, with some of the more gruesome scenes dominated by shades of red. Some of the alien designs feel like minor tweaks to characters you might’ve seen in the Star Wars universe. Not too surprisingly, the comic sticks to familiar green-alien forms for the denizens of Terminus, but these versions look more human than cartoonish, ditching the big eyes and disproportionate heads.
Robin is quite fascinating as the primary narrator of the story: she is gutsy, brave, and keeps doing grunt work to impressively learn the language of the aliens so quickly that she is able to get by with basic conversations surprisingly soon. Which on the other hand can also seem a little unrealistic. To top it off, the climactic chapter elevates her to a messiah like figure (now it’s making me think of ‘Dune’) and gives her a far too convenient hero’s ending.
From hiding out alone in dark unknown caverns, to trying to communicate with local religious figures, Robin has a heck of a journey on the terminus. But nobody else stands out in the comic book series, not even the ‘villain’ she finally faces off in the last chapter.
Just three issues long, ‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’ stuffs in too much action in too little pages, making it read like some ‘Stars Wars’ fan was high on drugs and decided to write a comic series in a feverish burst of inspiration. Ambitious reporter gets stranded on a hostile planet and saves the day. Sounds really cool, but isn’t executed memorably enough. But well, if you’re in mood for a girl-powered sci-fi story, pick this one up.
Rating: 3 on 5. ‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’ is also on Kindle Unlimited.
Read Next: ‘People We Meet On Vacation’: Desperately Derivative (Audio Version Below)