The basic premise of The Last Arrival is as follows: five survivors fleeing the potential destruction of their home planet of C’adaei – each chosen for their different qualities or abilities – search for a world that’s suitable for them to inhabit.

Taken as a very basic synopsis, it sounds like a fairly standard sci fi take, right?

Yet series creator/writer Daniel A. Prim layers some very intriguing stuff on top of that premise. There’s a great deal of drama set up in this first issue, much of it revolving around the fact that these characters don’t actually know each other – and, just because they’re thrown together on this important mission, well…it doesn’t automatically guarantee that they’ll just get along.

There’s also an awful lot of visual clues hinting at something very interesting bubbling just under the surface here too, with an event at the climax which may call into question the very nature of the reality our protagonists inhabit.

Gergely J. Szabó’s art does a fantastic job of making everything feel very alien and unusual, helped along by Szabrina Maharita’s deliberately outlandish, day-glo colouring.

It’s a great start to the story and sets the scene with lots of threads to explore; Prim mentions in an introductory page that he first came up with the concept for The Last Arrival when he was 14 – and the world building seen here does show that there’s a big story waiting to unfold in subsequent issues.

It’s well worth checking out – and you can download the entire first issue for free on a pay-what-you-want basis from Tripolar Comics here.

Many thanks to Daniel A. Prim for sending me The Last Arrival to review.