"We can still work it out"?

Let's start 2011 off with a bang, straight onto the first page of the 2nd instalment of Outland

And it's a rather jarring bang as well…

For starters a whole 2-3 minutes have just been lost from the movie with no explanation, There was a entire scene where Montone tries to console O'Neil following the departure of his wife and child gone…

But more telling is that in this one page there is probably more story packed in than any two page spread to date 

The speed and action pace this page sets up, definitely drops off as soon as the two page spreads are returned to on the next page

A lot of urgency and even fluidity in terms of standard comic book story telling happens on this page, but there is still half a page dedicated to locked in cold hard master shot as Steranko seems to be the absolute master of, you can almost imagine a poster book of each of these big panels without any dialogue..

Well the balloons are still there I guess...

But the coldness and the commodity of the io is about to be put into very sharp relief, we have already seen that the air and food is recycled (probably endlessly) and that the whole place is a contusion of a ducting nightmare almost on the level of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and we have just seen the only expression of love seen by the person its supposed to be effecting at such a distance that it makes no discernible impact at all, completely lost within a stylistic statement of utter form over function

So if there is no real love on io (only via video message after leaving it behind) what is left?…

stay tuned to find out...