Southern Cross is a 2016 Science Fiction-Horror Comic Book series by Becky Cloonan and Andy Belanger, published by Image Comics.
Alex Braith is a petty thief who books a passage on board the Southern Cross, a space tanker carrying a six-month rotation of workers to the refinery moon of Titan. She wants to find answers about the death of her sister Amber, an employee of the Zemi Corporation, who mysteriously met her demise on the Romulus Rig. As the voyage proceeds, mysterious events occur aboard the Southern Cross that appear to be tied to the ship's new gravity drive. As Alex investigates, she realizes that the power used in the gravity drive serves as a gateway to a very weird and a very unpleasant dimension, with a force that wants to cross into our own.
Not to be confused with Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross.
Southern Cross contains examples of:
- Anti-Hero: All of the main characters to varying degrees. Alex is an ex-convict and petty thief. Kyril is a Russian gangster who comes across as a creeper towards Alex during his first appearances. Hazel is a former detective who is trying to escape a dark past on Titan.
- Ax-Crazy: Lon gradually reveals himself to be a deadly acolyte of... whatever is behind the gateway.
- Bilingual Bonus: Kyril curses in Russian.
- Classy Cat-Burglar: Alex was a master thief and pickpocket for the Seven Hands before she ended up in prison.
- Decoy Protagonist:
- Alex Braith doesn't "die" at the end of volume one, but it becomes clear that she isn't the main character.
- Carter, the guy in charge of the Romulus Rig, is set up to be the character who picks up the slack until he gets poisoned in his only issue.
- Evil, Inc.: Zemi doesn't seem to give a shit about what goes on with the Titan rigs, as the workers constantly complain about the hazardous conditions and openly express hostility towards the Zemi administrator on Romulus. The corporate hierarchy from the top down is also shown to be massively corrupt.
- The Mafiya: Kyril is a Russian gangster who has the extensive tattoos to show for it. It is hinted, though not yet explicitly shown, that the Seven Hands crime syndicate is Russian in origin.
- MegaCorp: The Zemi Corporation operates the refineries on Titan and, with its brand appearing on everything in-universe, fills the role of a Weyland-Yutani-style megaconglomerate.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Subverted with Carter. He appears to be one of these as he runs the Romulus Rig. After Carter dies, it turns out he murdered one of his workers to secure the alien artifact that was discovered.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Amber grew up to be an upstanding citizen and employee for the Zemi Corporation, while Alex was the screw-up who fell into a life of crime.
- Unreliable Narrator: Of a sort. Volume two begins with Carter as the character we follow, and the background we hear about from an inner monologue (about being a former detective trying to escape the past) would seem to match. Then Carter dies, and it turns out the inner monologue actually belongs to Hazel, an old lady who seemed to be a supporting character.