The best thing about Orbiter is Warren Ellis' impassioned forward. I have doubts about the space program, myself. I believe in pure science and exploration, but I can't help but wonder what we might be able to do with that money on the earth's surface, when so many people are so impoverished. Still, Ellis' arguments catch my imagination, and I hope we can afford both.

The story itself... well, it's a lesser work. Hard-SF speculation about gravity drives and relativity isn't my cup of tea, though Doran and Stewart do an admirable job of infusing the talky story with inspiration and momentum. I feel like the living-spaceship concept has been done too many times for the extended treatment of it here. There wasn't much of a plot or a resolution. As always, Ellis gives us some lovely moments and some great lines, but it didn't add up this time. Stunning cover. ( )

Not as Hard Science Fiction as it Could Have Been

Warren Ellis's Orbiter is a graphic novel that hopes to reignite America's imagination with the space program. Though it is an interesting premise and setup, the story is ultimately predictable and more boyhood fantasy than hard science fiction.

Ten years after the Space Shuttle Venture vanished from orbit, the space program is dead and buried. But, when the Venture mysteriously reappears and comes in for a landing, there is a scramble to determine what happened to it and where it has been. A team is assembled of flawed experts, all with some connection or another with the failed space program and a stake in determining what has happened and what it means for mankind - they expect for the positive of course.

With the orbiter returning covered in skin and the inside stuffed with living tissue, and evidence of the Venture having landed on Mars, and only one of its crew returning - near catatonic - the team constructs a myriad of scenarios to explain the unexplainable. But, alas, the ending is pat and full of hope, but without any real payoff. ( )

A moving examination of the consequences of astronautical tragedy and the powerful call of outer space. I am not convinced that extreme transuranic elements will look so organic but I enjoyed the vision of this profound graphic novel. ( )

Read by Anjie, Summer 2006:
" I know nothing about graphic novels. I ended up going to Willard totally in the dark. Did you know that most GNs read from back to front and right to left?!? I thought I had been out in the sun too long! I picked Orbiter, by Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran because of the front cover, and because it read the ol'fashion way. The intended audience is much younger than I; late middle school - high school. The story is about NASA's demise after the space shuttle Venture disappears. Ten years pass when the shuttle plummets to the ground with only one survivor who is mentally unstable - crazy. A team of misfits discover that Venture had landed on Mars by electromagnetic levitation. The surviving crew member admits to other life form on Mars and takes the misfit team on another adventure in space. My inexperience in reading novels like this made me stumble on my words. I think my eye wanted to look instead of read. However, teens are awesome multitaskers; I think this is why they love em'."

No one expected the space shuttle Venture to return. But ten years after it disappeared it lands at Kennedy Space Center with one crew member aboard and Martian sand stuck in its landing gear. ( )