Orbital v3 cover detail by Serge Pelle
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Orbital v3: “Nomads”

Writer: Sylvain Runberg
Artist: Serge Pelle
Colorist: Serge Pelle
Lettering: Imadjinn
Translator: Jerome Saincantin
Published by: Dupuis/Cinebook
Number of Pages: 59
Original Publication: 2009

We return to planet Earth, where a diplomatic ceremony has a host of issues swirling around it that the IDO has to keep at bay. It’s a sci-fi book; of course diplomacy is challenged by outside violent actions!

Previously, in “Orbital”…

Volume 1:

Orbital v1 "Scars" cover detail by Serge Pelle

Volume 2:

Orbital v2 ("Ruptures") cover detail by Serge Pelle

Now, onto book 3, the first book in a new two part arc.

 

The Peace and the Nomads

 

The Rapakhun are the new alien species in Orbital v3.

The new alien species to focus on in this book is the Rapakhun. Those are the flying aliens skimming along the water on the cover.  They’re nomads, roaming the galaxy from planet to planet.  These days, they’re on earth outside of Kuala Lampur.  They’ve settled in the swamps, and not everyone is so sure they like them.  It doesn’t help that their species usually stays to itself and, oh yeah, practices cannibalism.

And then the fish in the waters around them turn up dead, en masse.  This makes the local fishermen unhappy, to put it mildly.  They blame the Rapakhuns.  Naturally.

The Rapakhuns say it’s not their fault, but the locals don’t believe them and things escalate over the course of the book.

The stutue commemmorating reconciliation between humans and Sandjarr stands tall in the city street

The other half of the story is the ceremony of reconciliation between humans and the Sandjarrs.  It’s a big deal with lots of dignitaries, a new monument built in the city to symbolize the peace between the two peoples, etc.  That’s why the IDO is there to begin with.  They need to keep the peace long enough that this ceremony goes off without a hitch.  But, as Mezoke reminds us on more than one occasion, is there really peace between the two when IDO has to go to such extreme lengths to keep the peace?

The local fisherman plan an attack on the Rapakhun

Once again, we see humanity being hostile towards alien life forms.  It’s a running theme throughout the series.  They don’t trust them, particularly when they have their own extremely foreign beliefs/habits/rituals.  Cannibalism ranks highly on the “Ick, Aliens!” scale of things to not trust an alien species for. Cabel is guilty of it, too, to a lesser extent.  He’s quick to believe some old stories or rumors, and it’s down to Mezoke to course correct him as they go.  For as open minded and optimistic as Caleb is, he’s still human.  His errors are slight and out of a lack of understanding, not a lack of empathy or a hostile mind.

There’s Always Tension

Caleb asks Mezoke if everything is OK

This book wastes zero time pitting species against each other, and creating havoc and conflict to drive those suspicions and hatred up twenty notches as quickly as possible.  Runberg’s script doesn’t hit the pause button to let you digest everything before things get just a bit worse and now you’re wondering how Caleb might possibly defuse this new situation.

The divide between Caleb and Mezoke remains here.  While the two have been paired with all the proper ceremony and best of intentions, there’s always those lingering feelings from the war that will stand between them.  It’s mostly on Caleb’s side, as he doesn’t always necessarily recognize what’s going on around him or why others aren’t quite as optimistic as he is, not as agreeable and open to change as he is.

 

Water Battles

Skimmers on earth patrol the seas

I love these skimmer ships.  They’re awesome.  I even love how Pelle uses white paint to color in the highlights along their top edges.

It’s interesting to see the tension between the fishermen and the Rapakhuns.  It turns into the threat of a naval battle, complete with blockades being established to prevent an escalating incident.  When you’re busy reading a sci-fi space opera kind of tale, you’re used to these kinds of tactics with spaceships and planets.  Here, it’s all about fishermen, boats, islands, and off-limited sections of water. That’s where science fiction writers cribbed their space battles from: the open sea movements of ships.

The boats used on all sides in this book are, of course futuristic boats.  They float and glide above the water.  So they may not be spaceships, but they’re partially built with spaceship parts.  It’s kind of cool.

The fishing boats of Malaysia coast above the water

Pelle’s designs for all the boats are great.  The fishermen’s boats look grimey and dirty.  They’re the kinds of hauls you’d expect to see people working for a living using.  The ships from the Confederation officers are shinier and newer.  They’re cleaner and high-tech.  They aren’t pieced together from parts leftover in the local junkyard.

 

Blasts from the Past

Caleb meets up with an old friend, Lukas

Caleb runs across an old pal, Lukas.  His entire appearance in this book appears to be to trigger Caleb’s flashback.  Caleb doesn’t answer Mezoke when she asks for more detail about Lukas. He’s obviously trying to hide something, and we see what on the next page.

Runberg sends us back to Prague in Caleb’s teenage years. It’s been a few years since the death of his parents, and he and Kristina are teenagers running wild through the streets, antagonizing and beating up isolationists.  In this particular occasion, things go a little too far.

I get the feeling that this moment will turn into something of a turning point in Caleb’s life, where his anger might have to give way to a little more reason.  It almost feels like Runberg is telling us everything we need to know about how Caleb handled his parents’ death emotionally from this one scene.  At the same time, he’s giving us the shortcut of jumping straight to the moment of change.

Maybe?

I hope we find out more, though I also hope the backstory doesn’t drown out the modern story, and that it just gives us a data point on Caleb’s history and personal narrative arc.

Oh, and I can’t help but feel that Lukas will play a larger part in a story in the future.  Whenever characters come back from the past like this, they wind us nursing grudges or hiding ulterior motives. He seems to harmless right now that he makes me nervous for Caleb…

 

The Art

Three volumes in, and Pelle’s art isn’t suffering one bit. In fact, this is the most impressive book so far. Pelle’s ship designs, in particular, are fun to look at. They’ve got some of Moebius’ imagination in them, along with the organize round lines of the kinds of mechanics you might see Jake Parker using in his art on Instagram.

He designs cities with as much skill and delight as this spaceships and his environments.  He has to draw dark and dreary swamplands in this book a lot, and he pulls it off.  It’s not just the details in the art, but the darkness of the coloring and the wider angles on the action.  They all add up to give you an evil Dagobah looking place that you know is never gong to end well for anyone who enters.

 

Recommended?

Orbital v3 cover by Serge Pelle

Yes, and I think this might be my favorite cover of the series, too.  So much of the book takes place in mines or in swamps or inside ships.  It’s nice to see a bright blue cover with a ship over water under a sun-filled sky.

Orbital v4 "Ravages" cover detail art by Serge Pelle

Coming Up in Volume 4: Things go from bad to worse, the truth is discovered, and the consequences are disastrous. So, yeah, happy fun times.

— 2018.062 —

 

Buy It Now

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Izneo.com Preview

 


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4 Comments

  1. In my (probably biased) opinion, modern BD suffers from two things: (sometimes too) gorgeous art and weak writing, the former being a distraction to the latter (for some people, I’m looking at you Augie). From those reviews so far, it’s hard for me to guess if this is actually a good book, worth reading, or just that you’re a good-willed reviewer. I can’t seem to be able to discern over all the stuff that we’ve seen a million times (tension between unlikely partners, flying boats, sure…) if there is something in here that would grab my interest. How many volumes in total? Is this a finite series?

    1. I don’t know that there’s any planned ending to it. 7 books are out so far. The seventh just came out in the fall, and new books usually only come out every other year.

      And, sure, the plots may be rehashes of different mixes of old ideas, but that’s OK by me. I like this genre. I like those tropes. This is an interesting mix of them. The thing that most excites me about the series is the way it’s building up on itself. You’ll see that in the review of volume 5 soon…. Everything is leading to something.

      Good art blinding me from bad story?!? I live in a comics market where the top artists can’t draw two 20 pages books in a row anymore and disappear into a lifetime of drawing covers and pin-ups and bust designs. So, yeah, good art is such a rarity that it can be over-valued. 😉

      1. P.S. There is one book I should be reviewing soon where I liked the art but recognize the complete incoherence of the story. You’ll see it eventually…

      2. You make a good point, but I just enjoy teasing you, I guess, from reading all your letters at the end of all the early Image books in the olden days; at the time, I couldn’t help but thinking “why does this obviously smart guy bother reading all that incomprehensible dreck?”. I did buy a few of those at first and then I just couldn’t once I realized how terrible they were. Years later I found almost everything from that era in a back issue bin bulk sale for almost nothing. Out of completism I tried to read some full runs to see if they ended up explaining stuff but they still didn’t make much sense to me. At the time I was mostly a DC guy and you had great insightful letters there too, so I couldn’t reconcile both things in my mind. I think it’s called cognitive dissonance or something.