Comic Review: Orbiter Hardcover

10/20/2004

Orbiter HC: Ladies and Gentlemen, there are SPOILERS in Space...

Loosely, the story of "Orbiter," dedicated to the astronauts of Columbia by Garth Ennis in the foreword, is about a US space shuttle which returns to earth after 10 years missing. Not destroyed, not taken -- missing. As in it just 'disappeared.'

Every good story starts somewhere other than the beginning, and I thought this one was pretty strong in that way. You begin at a homeless family's tent, pan out to learn that it's a massive encampment, pan out further to learn that it's on the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center, obviously defunct. My interest was peaked instantly at that. Nice entry ... followed by a pretty sweetly destructive RE-entry by a space shuttle, which lands on no small amount of homeless and their shanties. (Of course, this is punctuated by obvious confusion, as no space shuttle has been in flight in a decade.)

So the government rounds up the best in all the applicable fields to figure out wtf. The shuttle which has returned is the shuttle which was the reason for shutting down manned spaceflight. When it disappeared, the government crushed the program.

OK, up to here, everything is pretty cool. I'm intrigued and everything like that. But then something unfortunate happened. The book is short, like under 100 pages, so everything started picking up so much steam that when they're trying to explain what happened to the shuttle, the crew, the one survivor -- it's like they're jammin through so fast that you can't really get anything out of it. Major disappointment. They're trying to explain major adjustments to the laws of physics in two or three panels and so much gets lost that I found myself losing interest in the characters and story and just trying my damnest to understand how the hell this all worked.

Outside of that, it is a pretty fantastic sci-fi story. As I said, it deals with how the laws of physics can be altered to enable a vehicle with limited power to travel to the furthest reaches of the universe, to land on planets with fractional atmospheres, to enable the commander to breathe on said planets, etc.. Pretty fuckin cool. The quick rundown is that somewhere in space, a 'skin' enveloped the shuttle which protected it from the perils of deep-space travel, landing, etc.. Said skin also envelops the commander in liquid form, allowing him to breathe and survive on other planets. Think Ed Harris in "The Abyss."

The ending is pretty lame and I won't go into it.

All things being equal, I say read it, cause it's pretty interesting. Just don't expect it to be able to provide you with all the details you're wanting. It's just too short for that.

5 clanks.

So says...IronLung!


Wrongrobot: I have to say, sometimes Warren Ellis' fractured narratives can be jarring, starting in the middle of a story and only working through a portion of a much larger tale, ending in mid-plot as abruptly as it started. It's a technique he's used to great effect in books like Planetary and Global Frequency, but with the size of this volume, you are expecting a little more follow-through than what you ultimately get. My take on it is that this was another one of these blurted-out drunken pitches for a book that was greenlighted because it was Warren Ellis doing the blurting. I imagine it to have been as simple as this: "How the fuck could hyperspeed really exist, warp speed and all that? What if it's not the ship, but it's wearing super-fast SKIN? Ay?" and with that, a few days banging out the fun dialog and the "impact panels" Ellis' work frequently offers (those suspenseful, 'shit that's COOL' types of scenes) and left it at that, job done. Here's how it could happen, hyperspace 101, defined. Add some wonder and awe on the part of disillusioned humanity, scientists who have lost the compelling what-f of their fanstasies, add some unexplained gore and weird stomach lining implications, and you're off to a good start. I also wish it finished with some semblance of either a point, conclusion or pay-off. I truly reads like book one of a larger story, with no resolution and the unstated implication, in a 4th wall kind of way, that Ellis is telling you that it doesn't matter who did it, why, or what happens. The story is about them learning for themselves not how it happened, but to use their imagination and be able to at least acknowledge that the wonderful mysteries of space do exist after all. There's something underwhelmingly detatched about that, like some of the smoke-exhaled-in-your-face you get from some of Grant Morrison's mainstream work. So, I agree with IronLung's rating. The first half was a 10... and there wasn't really anything after that, so averaged out... 5 clicks...

That said, though, Colleen Doran's artwork was incredibly detailed, and impressed me above and beyond my pre-existing perception of the research and detail she goes into in order to make her artwork believable. Very impressive!

For more tidbits and detail on all the tidbits and detail Colleen Doran poured into her Orbiter pages, read this interview from a year and a half ago, when she was nearing completion on the project. Good stuff: Interview with Colleen Doran at Newsarama
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