I picked it up without thinking.
The art on the cover was gorgeous. Simple lines, muted colors, something almost melancholy in the way the character's eyes looked past the viewer. I flipped it open. The interior pages continued the aesthetic: clean panels, expressive faces, action sequences that flowed across pages like water.
I knew this story. I'd watched the anime more times than I could count. It was one of the few shows I'd actually revisited, usually on those late nights when I couldn't sleep and the apartment felt too quiet.
Something about Spike's story had always hit different for me. A guy drifting through space with no real direction, picking up work wherever he could find it, collecting people who became something like family even though none of them would admit it out loud.
