Free Planet vol. 1

Aubrey Sitterson is a writer who’s been knocking around the fringes for a while now doing series that either haven’t had a whole lot of success, or that should’ve had more success than they did.  The two “No One Left to Fight” miniseries I’ve talked about before definitely fall into that category and I’ve been keeping an eye on what he’s done since to see if he’ll deliver anything else on that level.  “Free Planet,” with artist Jed Dougherty, is his biggest swing yet as there’s definite ambition and substantial worldbuilding on display from the jump.

The planet ‘Aides has been a key commercial and military point in the Interplanetary Development Alliance (IDA) due to its production of the mineral Orchaleum.  While the IDA has been ruthlessly mining this in order to fund its expansion and conflicts with the Orouran Empire, little of the wealth produced found its way to the planet’s inhabitants.  This led ‘Aides inhabitants, and sympathetic members of the IDA to stage a revolt that led to the planet becoming Lutheria – the first truly free planet in the known universe.

While the war may be over, the difficult part of Lutheria maintaining its independence has only just begun.  This includes dealing with local strife as the various factions on the planet are now starting to fight amongst each other now that the immediate threat has been dealt with.  They’ve also got to deal with how to sell Orchaleum to their former foes in the IDA, or if that should even be done at all.  Then there’s the matter of making sure everyone stays fed, is defended from threats encroaching on the planet, and the general bureaucracy of it all.

One thing you can’t accuse “Free Planet” of is being a light read.  Each issue is dense with additional cultural and political details of the universe that Sitterson and Dougherty have created.  From telling us about other strategically important planets and other factions within the galaxy, it’s clear that a lot of work has gone into this series on every page.  This is even before you get into the political issues driving this as it’s also clear that Sitterson really wants you to consider those that go into a planet declaring itself independent from everyone else out there.  Which are also further detailed in the text pieces that close out each issue.

I realize this sounds like a lot, and it is, but the creators at least realized that each issue needs to be somewhat self-contained.  So while there is a clear overarching story tying it all together, the individual issues have their own concerns like what happens when a former terrorist is forced to join the Freedom Guard, or seeing their ace pilot take out an Orouran attack wing.  This is all expertly rendered by Dougherty who has to draw a lot of varied characters and settings and makes them all impressively distinct with appreciable detail. He’s also good with keeping the many instances of talking heads visually interesting, as well as making tricks like having to rotate the book during the Orouran attack narratively coherent.

In spite of all this, vol. 1 of “Free Planet” wound up as something that I respected far more than I actually enjoyed.  To explain, I’ll refer you back to an anecdote I heard regarding the creation of “Monstress,” as its writer Marjorie Liu did a lot of work creating its world before the series began.  The problem she had was that the story of the world wasn’t inherently interesting on its own terms and it wasn’t until she created the title’s protagonist, Maika, that a story within it actually became viable.  

This series shows you what happens when you do all that worldbuilding but don’t have a “Maika” to make it interesting.  I’m not entirely sure this is something Sitterson understood while he was writing these issues because it really feels like he expected the struggle of Lutheria’s independence to be interesting on its own terms.  Simply put:  It’s not.   Not only do the long info-dumps about the politics, backstory, and culture read just like that, buteach issue brings some new struggle to Lutheria’s doorstep, to the point where you start to wonder if freedom was even worth it.  I’m sure that we’ll get confirmation that it was, but not before the cast (and the reader’s feelings) are ground down to a nub.

Speaking of the cast, this is very much an ensemble book with the NINE members of the Freedom Guard introduced on the fourth page.  That’s a lot of characters to keep track of at the start of any series, and that’s even before you consider the other players that pop up over the following issues.  While their personalities and backstories are sketched out to the point where they’re easy to tell apart (thanks also to Dougherty’s designs), no one emerges as an actual protagonist, let alone a kind of breakout star for the series to focus its narrative around.  If anything, the cast just winds up being multiple mouthpieces for the politics and worldbuilding that the series has convinced itself is interesting on its own terms.

This all has the effect of making vol. 1 of “Free Planet” feel more like a slog than anything else.  Sitterson and Dougherty deserve some credit for trying to address the dirty business of maintaining freedom and liberty in a difficult situation within an original sci-fi world.  Yet what they’ve delivered lacks anything resembling fun, charm, or character.  While the series is continuing to be solicited with issue #11 arriving in April, I can’t help but feel that we’d all be better served if it wrapped up with issue #12 and allowed Sitterson and Dougherty to take whatever they’ve learned here into their next project.