Achieving Stable Orbit: Spaceman #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Houston, we have a spoiler.

I have sat in front of this empty page for about a half an hour now, reading and rereading Spaceman #2 and trying to figure out how to describe it. I am finding it difficult. Normally this would be because I was shitfaced. In this case, it’s because there’s really nothing else like this comic currently out there… although in all fairness, I am a little buzzed right now.

Seriously: I can’t pigeonhole this book. It’s a crime story with an epic sci-fi element with pieces of cyberpunk dribbled in. It opens with a man holding a gun on a monkey-man and an Asian child in her underwear. It ends in a pirate attack. In between there’s an astronauts in trouble arc and the collapse of the world economy. There is also more than one gunfight, an evisceration, a drug overdose, and a man’s face torn apart by a spinning propeller. All of which sounds like it’s an enema bottle and a tube of astroglide away from being a high-budget German scheisse flick, but somehow it all hangs together.

Taking a step back, this continues the story from the first issue. We follow the story of Orson, who is apparently a genetically-engineered ape man designed for space travel, because as we all learned from Apollo 13, space travel is inherently unsafe for frail creatures unable to accurately fling feces. He accidentally falls into a plot to kidnap a prepubescent reality show contestant, which winds up with Orson holding a gunshot wound, the kidnapper holding his guts in, and the child holding the gun, which means this comic is one appearance of Heather Thomas away from being every fantasy I had between my tenth and thirteenth birthdays.

In this issue we learn that Orson isn’t delusional, or at least not totally: there was, in fact, a NASA program to create people genetically engineered for long-term space travel, and we learn that this happened at some point before the complete and total collapse of Western Civilization we saw in the first issue. We also learn that this collapse happens sometime in the next six months, since we’re shown more than three people in a major metropolis reading print newspapers.

However, Orson might still be at least partially delusional, because all indications are that the NASA Spaceman program was scrapped before anyone went into space… but Orson continues flashing… back? Forwards? Passers-by on the street? Anyway, he keeps flashing… something… to a mission on Mars, which is a classic astronaut danger story along the lines of Apollo 13, provided Tom Hanks had access to an unlimited supply of human growth hormone.

I recognize that all of this sounds like it’s a hot mess, but it works. It all hangs together. I said in my review of the first issue that Spaceman is trying to push all my geek buttons, and at the time I was concerned that it was maybe trying a little too hard. Well let me tell you that it’s only taken a second issue to call those buttons officially pressed. What do you like – crime? Sci-Fi? Action? It’s all here, and it’s all coming together. And that includes Eduardo Rizzo’s art. If you’re familiar with his style, this book is the same as it ever was. But in this particular issue, Azzarello gives Rizzo some old school familiar territory to cover if you liked his stuff in 100 Bullets. It’s a wise writer who can stop and say, “Y’know… my artist is excellent at crime illustration. How can I take this science fiction story and fit a Glock-19 into it? Um… hello, Pirates!”

Make no mistake, this book isn’t perfect. Azzarello continues to write in that half-assed LOL-speak pidgin that’s a pain in the ass to interpret more often than it isn’t – this month’s choice: “We all brain you dee oh aye.” Because apparently in space, no one can hear you yodel. And the hinge that the idea of a “spaceman” genetic program swings on is the concept that NASA has unlimited funds and no oversight, when in reality if they want to shoot a rudimentary tinkertoy into space on the back of a commercial rocket launch, they get called spendthrift maniacs by some shitsplat Congressman who probably sponsored a special launch into a black hole. A black hole drilled into a man’s room stall wall. Fuck Congress. But I digress.

This is an ambitious book. It’s trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people. And so far, it’s working. Give it a shot.