Back in June, I reviewed the delightful science fiction kids’ comic Zita the Spacegirl and mentioned that the sequel would be out in September. That sequel, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl, comes out today, and is a most worthy follow-on to a most excellent kids’ comic.
The first volume of Zita introduced us to Zita, a regular girl from Earth, throws herself through a transdimensional portal to rescue a friend, and comes to ally herself with a motley band of robots, aliens, a giant mouse, and a rogueish showman named Piper, fighting off a death-cult that is determined to perform a human sacrifice to avert a deadly asteroid impact.
In Legend, Zita is now a celebrity, travelling from world to world with Piper and her friends, being exhibited to gawkers who want a glimpse of the hero who saved Scriptorium. On one nameless space-station — a worldlet every bit as weird and hilarious as the setting in book one — Zita meets a very special admirer amidst the throng. Her new friend is a discontinued doppelganger robot with the power to assume the likeness of anyone it meets. The poor robot has been literally doomed to the scrapheap, the last of its kind, and when it meets Zita, they swap identities, and Zita gets a moment of much-needed respite from the crowds.
This seems like a great deal to Zita (and her giant mouse friend, Pizzicato) until the robot decides to make the switch permanent, and takes off with Piper and Zita’s friends to attempt the rescue of yet another world from an invasion of bloodthirsty Star Hearts. Zita is taken in by another band of travelling performers, who, like Piper, are more than they seem.
What follows is another action-packed, high tension adventure story that is marvellously inventive, beautifully drawn, and filled with both comedy and real pathos that had both me and my four year old very worried for both the heroes and the villains in this story.
As I said, this is a most worthy follow-on to a fabulous first volume, and it ends in a way that makes it clear that creator Ben Hatke has more volumes to come.