By Jessica Abel, with Lydia Roberts & Walter various (Super Genius/Papercutz)
ISBN: 978-1-5458-0167-3 (TPB/Digital edition) 978-1-5458-0166-6 (HB)
Our fascination with Mars has never faltered and now that we’re almost within touching distance, the Red Planet’s allure and presence in our fiction has never been more broad-based and healthily imaginative. Amidst all the recent TV, movie and literary product, one of the most engaging treatments was an enthralling comics serial detailing the life of an extraordinary young woman in exceedingly trying times.
After Earth collapses in an ecological and economic meltdown, recently arrived first settlers on Mars were trapped under an increasingly burdensome fixed economic structure and oppressive corporate plutocracy. Two centuries later, an entire class of indentured servants eke out a fraught existence, harvesting water and food with machines rented from Arex (“we’re the air that you breathe”). The air they don’t breathe is meagre, toxic, dust-filled and a bit radioactive…
On Mars, everything belongs to The Company, and people usually live from cradle to grave in crippling debt. There is, ostensibly, a chance to escape: mandatory offworld mining missions to the asteroid belt. These Temporary Labor Assignments, however, are regarded as a quick ticket to certain death.
All tyrannies need bread and circuses though. On Mars that’s Hoverderby…
Based on an ancient Earth entertainment, teams of women race around a hover track in flying boots, scoring points by beating each other up. It’s the planet’s most popular spectator sport and Arex own that too…
Trish Nupindu is seven-and-a-half (on Mars. In Earth terms she’s 15): a smart, recently-orphaned kid who’s really good with engines and most mechanical systems. Stuck on her aunt’s water farm, Trish dreams of becoming a Hoverderby star and is utterly discontented with the state of her existence. All “Marty” reel from the force of crushing, inescapable poverty and Trish totally believes her only chance of getting out from under a system stacked from the get-go against ordinary people is to become a media star of the great game.
Bold and impatient, one day she sneaks off to join the local team and is suckered into a binding intern’s contract, even though she’s under-age…
Trish doesn’t even get to play: the team manager wants her because she’s good at fixing the hoverboots continually malfunctioning due to the all-pervasive dust. Her world turns upside down after she and avowed-revolutionary/pal Marq discover a native Martian. Recalled from near-death, the mythical creature opens their eyes to a whole new world, and “her” secrets will change forever not just the way Hoverderby is played but also the very economic balance of power on the Red Planet – if the ruthless upper echelons of Arex don’t stop them first…
The inspirational drama is backed up by extensive supplemental features such as the rules of Hoverderby; Derby Gear: Then and Now; illustrated specifications for Radsuits; fact-features on The Homestead Debate, Native Martians, Ares Collective Statement of Debt (ACSOD), TLAs and Asteroid Mining all delivered in the manner of wiki pages. Also on show are data bursts on legendary water miner Ismail Khan, faux kids’ comics “True Tales of the Early Colonists” and a complete Timeline of Mars Colonization.
Jessica Abel has been wowing readers and winning prizes since 1997 when she took both the Harvey and Lulu awards for Best New Talent. Previous graphic delights include the fabulous Artbabe, Growing Gills, Life Sucks, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, collections Soundtrack and Mirror, Window plus the Harvey-winning La Perdida.
Trish Trash began gradually unfolding in 2016: a sublime blend of subversive human drama and hard science fiction thriller with a supremely human and believable lead taking charge and changing the world. After three album releases, the entire saga was made available in this oversized (218 x 284 mm) hardback, plus paperback and eBook editions, at least one of which you really must see ASAP.
© Jessica Abel and Dargaud. All rights reserved. All other editorial material © 2018 by Super Genius.