Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Colleen Doran
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Clem Robins
Review by William D. Tucker
In the not-too-distant-future, a NASA space shuttle disappears not long after launch. No one knows exactly what happened, but this loss deals a deathblow to the program of manned spaceflight. The government is no longer willing to invest in any mission which could get people killed, and only robotic space exploration missions are funded. This shift in policy works alongside a drift towards militarism and growing economic inequality inside the United States, and within a decade of the space shuttle's vanishing, Kennedy Space Center has become a shantytown squat for growing populations of the permanently unemployed, climate change refugees from the flooding coastal regions, and masses of sick junkies, the untreated mentally ill, and those disenfranchised by jingoistic nationalism and white supremacy.
And then one day, the vanished space shuttle returns, crashing into the shantytown, and killing scores of innocent people. The military government of the United States moves quickly to investigate the returned shuttle, and try to crack the mystery of its disappearance. The military supervised scientists discover rather quickly that the shuttle is not what it once was: it is covered in a mysterious skin. Only one member of the original crew has survived. And they may no longer be human . . .
Orbiter is a science fiction allegory about the death and rebirth of manned space exploration in the United States of America. I describe it specifically as an allegory because the emphasis here is on themes, ideas, and an overall message about the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration among the "hard" and "soft" sciences of physics, biology, psychology, and engineering in order to overcome the vast challenges of intergalactic exploration, as opposed to a focus on characters and interpersonal drama. The characters are important, and well-sketched for the most part, but like many science fiction tales, the ideas are what matter most. This results in a cast of characters who mostly exist as spokespeople for different values and philosophical points of view, with a few devolving into stock stereotypes of geekdom and hardline military authoritarianism. I was able to forgive the weaknesses of some of the characterizations because the overall thematic development was so compelling.
The art is seamless and cinematic, foregoing sound effects text and thought bubbles, and emphasizing shadows, earth tones, faces, and the magnificent returned space shuttle which has undergone a startling biomechanical transformation. Scenes of crushing poverty and cataclysmic mass death set a very dark tone early on with an abundance of detail depicting piles of corpses and heaps of trash side by side. Human life has lost much of its meaning and value. But as the human investigators probe deeper into the mystery of the returned spacecraft, the people-with their questions and memories and theories-take center stage lifting the story into a higher plane both visually and textually.
At one hundred brisk pages, Orbiter cuts all the bullshit, and gives you everything you need between two covers.
This comic was originally published as a single volume hardback "graphic novel" way back in 2003, the year the US embarked on its disastrous Iraq adventure, and it seems even more relevant now as the United States struggles to keep its shit together under the shameful administration of Fake President trump and his government of white supremacists, hyper-nationalists, and climate change denying anti-intellectuals. Orbiter, for all its gruesome dystopian world-building, actually depicts a path forward by dramatizing interdisciplinary cooperation in the face of nihilistic inertia and despair. Sometimes dystopia clarifies one's thinking, and makes you realize you need not be bound to the failed institutions and ideologies of the past. This, too, is what I see as the primary lesson of the ordeal of the Fake President trump White House as it implodes in real time: what kind of country do we want marching forward into the future? One that is inclusive of all people regardless of skin color, sexuality, and gender identity? Or a corrupt shithole of jingoism and white supremacy?
Orbiter offered transcendent hope in the dark days of the lying, warmongering Bush/Cheney regime in 2003, and it holds up in this present moment as well.
