Why this is called Hadrian’s Wall? It is name of the space ship where story happens but nothing connects to real life Hadrian’s Wall. Or I don’t know the history of real life Hadrian’s Wall well enough. Other confusing thing is this happens in alternative time line when nuclear bombs exploded in New York and Moscow during the cold war. That never comes up in the story. Like that was part of original idea and got chopped when the story was streamlined. This could have easily been set in our timeline.
Hadrian’s Wall starts as detective story. Man has died on space ship Hadrian’s Wall. Company sends investigator to rubber stamp it as accident. Investigator is pain killer addict and has history with dead man and his wife. From that point onward mystery deepens and escalates. Story is comic book version of mix of Outland, The Expanse and Solaris without supernatural aspects of last two.
Hadrian’s Wall stays hard science fiction through out the story. Space is really hostile to humans. Maybe the speed they can travel is unrealistic but nothing else is. There aren’t that many science fiction stories with realistic space travelling speeds. Story start slowly building into several twists. I am not sure how this works if you want to guess who actually did it while you read it. It is pretty obvious around half way point even though story tries to give hints to other direction. After half way point it is more about why and what will happen.
I am fan of hard science fiction. Hadrian’s Wall is good hard science fiction. Lately I have read comics where art has been outstanding. In Hadrian’s Wall it does its job without being spectacular. Story has adult themes. By adult themes I don’t mean sex and violence. I mean themes middle ages readers can relate to. Creative team have several superhero comics under their belts. Hadrian’s Wall is quite hard away from superhero comics and that is a good thing. It is realistic story which could have set in to modern day by dropping few science fiction concepts and replacing them by something modern day.
I hope Hadrian’s Wall did well enough that we will get more comics like it. Wouldn’t mind if we get movies and tv series like it but that might be too much since audiovisual stories have to be full of action nowadays. If you liked Outland you will probably like Hadrian’s Wall. Both have same energy and spirit.