Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
We explore, we break new ground and we laud those who dream and achieve the seemingly impossible, we do it all because deep down inside of us there is a spark of brilliance that once saw us climb down of the trees, stand erect and imagine. We see the horizon as the next goal to reach, perhaps not realising that the horizon moves as we do, but nevertheless it is one that can be grasped, should be held and desired, that from the trees to the Moon is but a short step for humanity, but one that means the world.
The events of July 1969 are documented and discussed to the point of exhaustion and yet we still find a way, quite rightly, to remember the absolute heroic nature of the three men who climbed into that spacecraft at the end of the decade, a future offered, a journey of the blinding light of hope, peace and prosperity played out against the savagery of war on the ground, of the end of the space race, of the beginning of the great adventure.
We may know the story, or at least part of it, to those over the age of 60, perhaps even the glory reflected back on humanity’s single most daunting quest for knowledge would still be part of their conscious and dreams, but in the British artistic trio of Matt Finch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins, the events take more resonance, the lives of the three men who ventured to where human had gone before, become the stuff of immortality, a feeling that perhaps has waned as humanity struggled in the time since to escape our bounds and witness what lays beyond with our own eyes.
It is the dichotomy of the age that space exploration has never been more worthwhile, and yet we only send machines to record the birth of stars and the death of pride; yet for eight days in the fateful month of July, we touched the first boundary of our imagination.
Apollo is a beautifully envisaged Graphic Novel, its artwork perhaps owing a debt to the great passion of Southport’s Frank Hampson and his creation of Dan Dare, but the storyline itself is where the novel stands out, the vivid dreams, fears, vanity, humility and humanity of Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong all captured across 160 pages, the tightness of thought, the insecurity of possible failure and in Buzz Aldrin’s case, the blinkered mental abuse suffered at the hands of a father who could not see past his own son’s achievements.
All this makes you value your heroes more, of understanding what drives such men and women to go beyond the stars, to paraphrase the great American President, John F. Kennedy, “We choose to go to the moon”, we do not wait for greatness and belief to come to us.
Matt Finch, Chris Baker and Mike Collins’s Apollo is released on June 7th via SelfMadeHero
Ian D. Hall