ARK Review

ARK

writer- Peter Dabbene

artist- Ryan Bayliss

The Explorer, a ship with a fully human crew and meta-human passengers has just passed Pluto's orbit and discovered that all communications with Earth have stopped. Is Earth testing the Explorer, or is it

something else, something more sinister? When a secret encoded message costs one meta his life, tension between the humans and the animal/human hybrids grows and makes the Explorer a ticking time bomb unlike any other. Will they succumb to paranoia and destroy each other, or will they work together to solve the mystery and accept that being united is their only hope?

ARK is just one book in Arcana Studio's line of top notch science fiction comics, but this book in particular, really caught my attention. It touches on some of today's most sensitive topics and applies them to the year 2053. Our news headlines are filled with stories about bullying, marriage equality debates, and human rights arguments. ARK implies that issues like that are still rearing their ugly heads in the future, thrusting prejudice and bigotry onto a new type of human.

Dabbene doesn't come off as a writer with a political or social agenda, but it's obvious that he has been influenced by these things. He's a very thoughtful writer. He takes the time and makes the effort to fully develop his characters before he puts them to script. Everyone on the crew has their own individual personality along with their own lifelong goals, and each of the meta-humans have their own colorful background and appearance. I have no doubt that he knows the life story of each of the Explorer's passengers, even though they aren't talked about in this book. Peter Dabbene really pulls of the sci-fi mystery, and what's more important, he pulls it off in the form of an amazing graphic novel. He's definitely going on my “must read more of” list.

I wasn't sure how I felt about Ryan Bayliss' artwork at first.  I couldn't put my finger on it. There was

just something that made me uncomfortable. Then it dawned on me that what I was bothered by was similar to the theory of “the uncanny valley.” In the theory of “the uncanny valley,” we are attracted to something because of how human it looks until that thing looks too human. At that point, we're repulsed by the thing we found attractive. It seems that people are disturbed by non-human things taking on extremely convincing human qualities. This is a very familiar aspect of many science fiction stories. In ARK, it's probably even intentional. Ape-men, bird-women, even a lightning bug/human hybrid. Bayliss conveys the very thing that Dabbene is warning us about in the book. These differences between humans and metas are the spark in the tension, and it just goes to show that the art and story are perfectly paired. When I discovered what made me so uneasy, I loved the art even more.

There was something else about the images in ARK that made me love this book. It took me back to some of my favorite sci-fi films and TV shows. The Explorer is an exploration ship. It's clean and sterile and brings up thoughts of Logan's Run, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the ship from the original Alien film with Sigourney Weaver. Bayliss gives us the Explorer and its crew in that same futuristic, hygienic, uncontaminated splendor.

I am going to have to thank both Peter Dabbene and Ryan Bayliss personally for sending me on their trip past Pluto's orbit. I'd love to see this graphic novel be turned into a film or a television show, and I hope that they revisit the crew of the Explorer from time to time in comic book form, because I know that there are many more adventures in store for these characters.