It's Dark Out Here by Chris Baldie

Elegant simple cartooning coupled with a smart, dry wit with a poignant edge, proves, that while in space no one may hear you scream, they sure as hell might hear you laugh. 

Chris Baldie's It's Dark Out Here is a beautiful study in silent humour, playing off sharp puns with a keen science-based edge, to leave his audience smiling gleefully. 

A lot of its power to please comes from the effortlessly uncomplicated style he renders his hero in, a moustachioed spaceman - clearly the blueprint for his Space Captain character - who floats alone in the void, keeping himself busy with a variety of mundane activities bought to comedic effect by the nature of his situation.

Whether he's changing light bulbs in the stars, painting landscape 'studies in black, checking his online dating profile or even pulling out a Hoover for a vacuum gag that while predictable  is perfectly and cleverly delivered across the small, neat, four panel grid Baldie chooses - at first glance a simple choice but employed to create a number of sophisticated visual gags throughout. 

But there's a lonely note here too, in the aforementioned dating profile strip we're reminded of our heroes isolation, as we are to a degree by the book's evocative title, but that's so acutely expressed as in the deeply touching two-page spread of One Man's Trash ... and Another Man's Treasure, where our spaceman cobbled together a companion from space debris to float along in the void next him.

There's a smart edge to a lot of the jokes too, often played out in the strips titles, which pay lip service to a variety of scientific conceits, twisted adeptly to the advantage of each strip's punchline.

At the same time Baldie has mastered the limitations of his space, allowing his hero to wander fluidly across the panels as he drifts through space, and even in one memorable spot, filling the grid with a single panel just to emphasise one big gag that you can half imagine once scrawled on a beer mat acting as the genesis for the entire book.

In the protagonist of It's Dark Out Here Baldie has found an endearing everyman who touches us, tickles us and teaches us and in the end, it's just a shame there isn't more of it.

I grew up poring over newspaper comic strips and in a lot of ways they are what inspired me to try to draw comics myself. 

After reading Its Dark Out Here I found myself reflecting that what Chris Baldie has created here, is something that is imbued with that same artful simplicity and magic.

It would be a welcome addition to the comic's page on any paper, delighting children and adults in equal measure, and perhaps, given that opportunity, It's Dark Out There might one day be the spark that inspired another generation of budding cartoonists to pick up a pen and have a go.

You can find Chris Baldie on Twitter @ChrisBaldie or online at chrisbaldie.com and you can buy It's Dark Out Here at https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/171900030/its-dark-out-here-a-minicomic-adventure?ref=shop_home_active