Sure, Tom Hanks and company told the story of how we got there -- in exhaustive detail and to critical acclaim -- but when you get right down to it, the moon's still up there, and we're all still down here.

For comics writer Larry Young, that wasn't good enough. His interest in space exploration led him to create Astronauts in Trouble: Live From the Moon, a five-issue comic book series (Astronauts in Trouble/Planet Lar collection, $12.95) that takes humanity back to the moon.

The Making of Astronauts in Trouble

Larry Young has also released a companion volume, The Making of Astronauts in Trouble, which contains background information about the series, thefull scripts to all five issues, and the two-page backup features from the individual issues.

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	Astronauts in Trouble

Set in 2019, the mission is funded and led by billionaire industrialist Ishmael Hayes. Like any good egomaniac, Hayes wants his adventure recorded for both posterity and the six o'clock news.

To that end, he recruits the Channel Seven news team -- on-air personality Dave Archer, cameraman Heck Allen and producer Annie Franklin -- to accompany him and cover the story for their earthbound audience.

A terrorist attack forces the Hayes team and the Channel Seven crew to launch ahead of schedule. When they arrive on the moon, Dave, Heck and Annie discover that there is more going on than their host told them.

As the story builds toward an explosive conclusion, everyone from the media to the mafia to the U.S. government takes an interest in Hayes' exploits.

The right stuff

Despite the near-future setting, Astronauts in Trouble reflects the manifest space destiny that John Glenn -- who makes a cameo in the series -- and John F. Kennedy fostered in a generation.

Ishmael Hayes is a product of that era, and he never forgot the first moon landing.

However, Hayes isn't simply an idealist. He's also a capitalist. His stated vision for the moon includes a permanent base and a mining colony.

Annie, Dave and Heck belong to a later generation. They grew up in the shadow of the Challenger disaster, and became adults against the backdrop of the recent ill-fated Mars probes.

Impressive as it is, the moon is just another location shoot for them.

Laid-back heroes

Unlike the "Hollywood ordinary" people who become embroiled in extraordinary circumstances on the silver screen, Young's creations are organically normal. Not only could you meet them in a bar, but chances are they'd stick you with the tab at the end of the night.

Faced with the unimaginably momentous experience of walking on the moon, Heck and Annie don't fall back on sound bite profundities. They express the simple truth about where they are, and what they are doing: "This is so cool."

Once they've made peace with the coolness of their surroundings, the pair are so centered that the moonscape no longer matters. Their conversation skews toward the mundane, as when Heck tells Annie, "The thing I hate most about low-budget barbarian movies . . ."

While Heck and Annie are touchstone characters, Dave Archer is more of a challenge. Of the three main characters, Dave undergoes the most significant transformation.

Although he is a respected journalist, he is an authority figure who feels intimidated by authority. By the end of the series, Dave blunders into heroism, and in doing so has a personal breakthrough.

Space illustrated

Working from Young's scripts, artists Matt Smith and Charlie Adlard capture a surprising amount of motion on the static comics page. This is a reflection of their collective grasp of the conventions of space fiction.

Although neither Smith nor Adlard has an especially cartoony art style, their visual vocabulary --guided by Young's meticulous panel breakdowns -- shows definite animation and film influences.

This makes it relatively easy for a reader familiar with these elements to fill in the blanks. The result is a surprisingly dynamic narrative flow.

Young's grasp of space science is above reproach. The biggest liberty he takes with reality lies in imagining that the moon has a ready supply of polar ice, something contemporary lunar science has yet to confirm.

Young, Smith and Adlard more than compensate for this assumption by adhering to the bedrock rule of hard science fiction: sound doesn't travel in a vacuum.

With the exception of dialogue transmitted over space suit radios, exterior scenes take place in complete silence. Even a climactic moon-shattering kaboom is left to the visual imagination.