Convert by John Arcudi & Savannah Finley

I can’t be the only person who picked up this title thinking that there’d be a religious subtext here. And perhaps there is, but the creators chose a much more interesting way to use the title word in this graphic novel, that collects the first (?) four books of the series.

Science Officer Orrin Kutela is a twofer on his space crew’s mission to an uncharted planet. As both an evolutionary biologist and an artist, he’s responsible for recording any images should the ship’s equipment fail. But it’s failure of an entirely unexpected kind that leaves him stranded planet-side, alone and with any help some thirty years away.

With k-rations running out, Orrin starts looking for sustenance. The local flora, while beautiful, doesn’t have enough nutrients to sustain a human being. The fauna proves difficult to hunt and trap. When Orrin finally manages to catch and cook a fish, his body rejects the meal entirely, treating it as poison.

Dying of starvation, Orrin writes what he thinks will be his last words in the journal he’s been diligently keeping since making landfall. But the planet and its inhabitants aren’t done with him yet, as he slowly begins a process of conversion that changes everything about him, body and, perhaps, soul.

There are strong Annihilation vibes in this tale of a man who must adapt to survive, and in so doing learn that sometimes survival is the greatest lie of all. Orrin’s adoption into the local ecology is both transcendent and nightmarish, as he learns not only how to assimilate but how to improve the lives of the sentient creatures he’s joined, even as the being known as The Provider uses him as a pawn. It’s thought-provoking and weird, even if I feel that it doesn’t go quite deep enough into the themes it’s attempting to explore.

Orrin’s initial fight against starvation feels the most visceral part of this book, as his dream job turns into a nightmare of survival. Things start getting sketchy after Orrin attempts to prove himself to his newfound people. Perhaps coincidentally, this coincides with the change of colorist from Gonzalo Ruggieri to Miguel Co, whose palette is distinctly more diffuse, making an already hallucinatory tale feel even less focused than before.

But the artists certainly aren’t to blame for a faltering take on science that eventually turns into Orrin’s realization that he’s disgusted with himself and the life he’s chosen. Other tales of assimilation often emphasize the nobility of the protagonist’s choice and the dignity of his new chosen people. Instead, this graphic novel talks about how Orrin does this only to survive, and how any joy he finds in his conversion is the result of a deliberate and despairing self-delusion. It’s a very bleak outlook that assumes that people shy away from nihilism only through some combination of personal weakness and self-sacrificing altruism (because of course Orrin IS the savior here.)

I don’t personally find this mix of self-pity and -aggrandizement interesting enough to read more than one book about. I did, however, realize yesterday that I’m a near-relentless optimist: as such, books like this are not For Me. And that’s okay! It was definitely an interesting take on sci-fi horror, especially in how the dissonance of alien culture from humanity can cause an ongoing existential crisis. I just have a hard time not extruding the metaphor here to apply to actual human issues, and feeling vaguely revolted at the xenophobia as a result.

Convert by John Arcudi & Savannah Finley was published March 18 2025 by Image Comics and is available from all good booksellers, including