Border Worlds - Sci-Fi by Don Simpson

Border Worlds is Don Simpson’s most dramatic departure from the superhero parody antics of Megaton Man — a hushed, atmospheric science fiction saga set on a domed space station at the razor’s edge of colonized space, where every shadow hides a secret and the void beyond the dome hums with menace.

Story

The series centers on Jenny Woodlore, a young woman fleeing a decaying Earth to join her brother on Chrysalis, a remote space station perched on humanity’s last frontier. She arrives seeking a fresh start and finds something far more complicated: a brother drowning in cheap liquor and a broken-down space trucking business, a station simmering with colonial tensions and corporate scheming, and a mystery involving a dead billionaire whose vanished estate might hold the key to Chrysalis’s future — or its destruction. Jenny reinvents herself as a space taxi driver, a perfect vantage point for a woman learning to navigate the station’s tangled web of desperate colonists, shadowy power players, and an enigmatic elderly architect whose connection to her runs deeper than she knows.

Origin and Style

Border Worlds began as a backup feature in Megaton Man #6 (1985), running through issue #10. Simpson conceived it as a conscious artistic challenge: after years of drawing impossibly muscled heroes and cranking out one-liner-heavy parody, he wanted to prove his range. “I wanted to try something dramatic,” Simpson told Amazing Heroes in 1986, “something that didn’t rely on telling a joke in every picture.” The visual transformation was equally stark. Simpson adopted a heavily crosshatched, shadow-drenched style that evoked the EC Comics tradition and European science fiction bande dessinée — closer to the moody linework of Jean Giraud than the broad cartooning of his superhero work. The shift was so pronounced that Kitchen Sink Press published the series under its mature readers imprint, giving Simpson room to explore adult themes without the safety net of comedy.

Publication History

The backup strips were expanded into a seven-issue series (July 1986 – August 1987), each issue written, drawn, and lettered by Simpson alone. A follow-up one-shot, Border Worlds: Marooned #1, appeared in 1990 under Simpson’s pseudonym Anton Drek for Fantagraphics’ Eros Comix imprint, pushing the series’ boundaries even further. In 2017, Dover Publications collected the complete series into a single hardcover volume, rescuing the long-out-of-print saga for a new generation. The collection pairs the original full-color backup strips from Megaton Man with the black-and-white comic book run and a wealth of supplementary material. You can find the complete collection at Dover Publications and explore Simpson’s ongoing work on his blog.

Legacy

Border Worlds represents a vital turning point in Simpson’s career — the moment a cartoonist best known for comedy proved his range with something quieter, stranger, and more personal. While it never reached the commercial heights of Megaton Man, the series earned a devoted cult following, and some critics regard it as Simpson’s most artistically accomplished work. The ongoing Fantagraphics collections of Simpson’s complete oeuvre ensure that this haunting space station saga keeps finding new readers.

Perfect for fans of 2000 AD, the brooding science fiction of Jean “Moebius” Giraud, and character-driven space station dramas like Babylon 5 or the manga Planetes.