ORBITER

The original hard cover graphic novel ORBITER is Warren Ellis & Colleen Doran's delightful love letter to NASA and about mankind's attempts at space travel. The story (about the dissection of and mystery behind a space shuttle that returns after having disappeared a decade prior to the story's beginning) does not exactly mine new territory, but the execution is fine. Ellis paces the script, drawing out the mystery and creating a line of palatable suspense, all of it jogging towards a pleasurable ending filled with wonder and hope.

Doran's art is simultaneously functional and ornate, surprisingly unobtrusive and in the end the thing that raises Ellis tale from being just another good idea to something that befits a special graphic novel.

Being a special graphic novel might be the most important thing about Orbiter. While the book's yarn may not be great, it's great to see a group of people get together to create an original hardcover graphic novel for the American comics market - the kind of thing they get more often in Europe.
[DRECK, DULL, READABLE, PRETTY GOOD, EXCELLENT]