By Dustin Cabeal

Over the past two years, I have read an exhausting number of anthologies. It was once a comic format that I enjoyed since you were able to read a lot of comics from a variety of creators. Now it seems as if it’s the golden standard for indie publishers to highlight a lot of new talent, which isn’t bad, but with it comes a varying degree of success.  Success that I didn’t find in Tales from Orbit.

The biggest take away from this issue is that none of the stories resonated with me. Granted, I did read this several weeks ago, but will be reviewing five other books I read at the same time, and I recall all of them. I had to thumb through Tales of Orbit again to refresh my memory.

Upon doing this, I noticed that there’s not really a theme to this volume. Tales from Orbit implies that there’s a space theme and hell I’ll give you the easy add-on of “future” to that, but that is not the case. The second story is a look at God presenting his planet for a science fair and failing. Sure, there’s sci-fi elements for sure, but the overall theme of the story isn’t sci-fi.

There were a good handful of stories that were okay. They just lacked that something special to make them special. There was also a handful that I didn’t want to see again having already read them once. That boils down to personal taste, but it can’t be helped.

Someone will enjoy this anthology. Hell, I’m sure a lot of comic readers will enjoy this anthology. It might end up being someone’s first indie comic, and that’s a good thing. For me, it just ends up feeling like a lot of creators seizing the opportunity to make comics, but not necessarily having a story that fits the anthology format. And I can’t blame them, but the end product is that I didn’t enjoy reading Tales of Orbit and would have a hard time recommending it to others.

But hey, I’m just one reviewer, so keep making comics.

Score: 2/5

Tales from Orbit #1
Writers: Various
Artists: Various
Publisher: WP Comics