Title: OrchidIssue: 1
Date: October, 2011
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer:Tom Morello
Artist: Scott Hepburn
Colorist: Dan Jackson
Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot
Cover: Massimo Carnevale
Editor: Jim Gibbons, Patrick Thorpe, Sierra Hahn, Dave Land
I went into this with high hopes for Tom Morello as a comic book writer. While I haven't listened to too much Rage Against the Machine, or The Nightwatchman, I have enjoyed Morello's collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, and he did have that time when he awesomely told off Paul Ryan in the pages of Rolling Stone. The guy is essentially a member of the E Street Band at this point, and so I feel some obligation as a huge Springsteen fan to give him props.
So I really wanted to like this. It had an awesome cover, by the way (actually, this is apparently the variant cover; regardless it's pretty awesome).
Unfortunately, that was about where my liking of it ended.
The story is set in a postapocalyptic world featuring a mostly submerged Earth (not explained, although there were vague references that the dumping of chemicals in the oceans was somehow to blame) inhabited my mutated animals right out of, well, right out of a postapocalyptic world. A postapocalyptic world writting in 1983 or so, that is. We're talking serious Gamma World style creatures.
So the setting is a bit goofy, although the plot, involving the last survivor of a failed rebellion on the run, seems to take itself completely seriously. The silly setting was not the main issue.
The main issue was misogyny, which is pretty much the unintentional main theme of the story here. Look, I get it. The setting is supposed to be horribly dystopian. The villains are supposed to be horrible human beings and we will cheer for them getting their comeuppance in a future issue. At least the readers who stick around long enough will. I will not be one of them.
Women forced into prostitution with the word "property" tattooed onto them was just too distasteful for me to want to continue reading this. That sentence was going to start with "Sorry, but". I'm not actually sorry. This story was loaded with violence against women, both implied and explicit, and it was woven into the society of the setting. It was done excessively, and unnecessarily for the purposes of the story Morello was trying to tell. That is not a story I want to read and it's not a series I want to support. No apologies.
I had a hard time finding any reason to care about the characters, even as horrible things happened to them.
Dystopia is a tough sell for me. I am not a fan of harsh and dark settings, but when I think of an example of a Dystopian story that I like, I realize that before The Hunger Games had fully revealed how truly terrible its setting and society were, the story had given reason to care about Katniss and several of the supporting characters.
All that Orchid gave me in the first issue was reasons to stop reading.
Rating: 2/10
