Hotelitor

During her unpaid hospitality management work placement, 18-year-old student Anna runs around completing necessary but drudging tasks at Hotelitor, a “luxury-class defense and hospitality unit” created by Apatus Corporation for Colony 4CX, one of its retail-and-leisure locations. While the bridge crew presciently celebrate “another year without incident on board” planet-side, Anna’s colleagues Rodney and Tori blithely launch Hotelitor off-colony, where a surprise battle with a massive alien maroons the mech-like hotel in remote space. Over a month later and sans any real leadership on board, remaining guests and staff form factions and entertainingly clash with one another to cope with the intergalactic stranding, leaving Anna and her makeshift bridge crew the only ones attempting to pilot Hotelitor back home. They soon dock on an Apatus-run mining outpost, but their relief is cut short once they learn that the corporation has committed myriad heinous crimes, including hoarding resources, and plans to destroy Hotelitor and its inhabitants to protect their secret. Utilizing flat coloring and straightforward paneling, Hicks (Glorious Wrestling Alliance) presents a clever, high-octane graphic novel satire of the bourgeois and proletariat. Human characters are depicted with varying skin tones. Ages 14–up. (May)