I can barely believe this amazing graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran is two decades old and counting. It felt pretty damn modern twenty years ago and sadly feels even more so. I say sadly given the subject matter the graphic novel addresses. A world where the human race has dropped out of love with the notion of mankind traveling through space, a world where people no longer look to the skies, where poverty of the spirit, of the imagination actually leads to poverty of an even more real world kind. We may all well be standing in the gutter but we no longer raise our eyes to the heavens. And something equally melancholy struck me as I thought about the world that Warren envisioned and Colleen Doran brought to dreary life. A comparison to the state of the comics industry as it is today rather than the space programme, where so many amazing new developments have taken place, from the work of Chinese scientists, the Indian Space Programme, the stirling efforts of a disparate British set of communities and the singular efforts of Elon Musk. Its all happening, while all the while the attention of the huge mainstream have to a degree fallen out of love with the comics scene. Or at best their attention has been distracted by a rise of intrest in other art forms and medias.It is not that long ago that the comics industry was in robust and spunky form. With a successful and big selling mainstream for the larger companies to a vibrant indie culture. There was the crossover to cinema with the rise in popularity of big budget movies based on superhero comics, there were creators who became "celebrities" in their own right, yet so much has changed in such a short time. Sales just are not what they were,some one suggested to me recently that the current comics scene is merely existing in the crumbling ruins of its own past,complete with statues of former giants with their heads knocked off. (I thought of Lancaster Merrin in the Iraqicy desert, with the wind picking up and the snarling of feral dogs, as the statue of the demon Pazuzu reminds him of a final confrontation to come.. I think he was thinkking more of statues in a neat and tidy museum display.Well hey, I was brought up a Catholic, I lean towards catastrophe.) This bleak vision, in tune with modernity, seemed a bit overcooked to me as just as in Orbiter, I believe it is possible to revive the ailing industry, we just have to remind the wider world of the possibilities the medium has to offer, to enrich the imagination, and thereby the lives, of millions of people.
For instance, that brilliant mind of Warren Ellis is so capable of imaginative leaps that could kickstart a stalled genre, be it science fiction, horror, psuedo history and superheroes.You can read the introduction of Orbiter, to understand what inspired and drove him to tell this tale.Its an intellectual and emotional heartstopper.
Orbiter,eh.
Bravo Warren and Colleen. Your story continues to have legs.
