Roche Limit, Vol. 1: Anomalous

Roche Limit #1

by Michael Moreci (Writer), Vic Malhotra (Illustrator)

-Our destiny is the stars, and I will lead us there.- Twenty years after this promise, billionaire Langford Skaargard's dream of cosmic exploration is no more. Roche Limit, a colony situated on the cusp of a mysterious energy anomaly, is a melting pot of crime and terrible secrets. When Bekkah Hudson goes missing, the search to find her will plunge her sister and a cadre of the colony's underworld figures into an odyssey that reveals a grim future for mankind. Blending 2001 with Blade Runner, Roche Limit is the first part of a bold sci-fi/noir trilogy.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Fiction, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics, Space

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2015

About the author

Michael Moreci is a bestselling comics author and novelist. His original works include the space adventure novels Black Star Renegades and We Are Mayhem, as well as the comic series Wasted Space, The Plot, Hexagon, Curse, Archangel 8, and more. The Plot appeared on numerous best of 2019 lists, and Wasted Space has been hailed as one of the best comics of the past decade. Moreci's comic trilogy Roche Limit was called one of the best sci-fi comics of all-time by Paste Magazine, and Black Star Renegades was an Audie Award finalist for best sci-fi of 2018.

Moreci has also written for Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and the DC universe--including the YA graphic novel The Lost Carnival: A Dick Grayson Story. He's also adapted Eoin Colfer's bestselling Artemis Fowl series into graphic novels.

He lives outside Chicago with his family.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One part detective story, one part sci-fi space adventure, one part uncanny, vaguely Lovecraftian horror.

Needless to say, it's an interesting concept for a book, and solid execution in the storytelling.

This first trade paperback has its own tight arc. It's a little similar to a detective story - A woman is looking for her lost sister on a space station where things are... odd. There's a rift, dark energy, signs and portents. You learn about the world as you go, and the world is interesting.

It was easy to pick up and follow what was going on. The first trade had good resolution, but I'm curious as to the world now, and I've ordered the next several books to see where the story goes from here.

Bit of an issue. The text is kinda small. It wouldn't have bugged me 10 years ago, but these days it does a little bit.

[Jan Philipzig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one felt a bit fanboyish, I'd say. I could sense the creators' passion for the material, but the story's sci-fi-noir angle is far from original, the characters barely come to life, and the dialogue is too wordy considering how little it contributes to plot and characterization. It's a shame, because the world building is quite complex and ambitious - it just lacks spark, feels labored: I need more reason to care.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Image sure does have a lot of these types of sci-fi books, but this one stands out. Roche Limit was built as a waypoint for further space exploration that never happened. It orbits a space anomaly that some people suggest is one end of a wormhole. A woman shows up on the colony looking for her sister who has gone missing. Things spiral out of control from there. Fans of shows like The Expanse will enjoy this.

Vic Malhotra provides solid art, reminiscent of Michael Lark or Charles Adlard.

[CS · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bullet Review:

What small, minuscule text! I mean, I wish I had a magnifying glass to read it - if I could muster up the interest.

Woman...blah blah...looking for sister...blah blah...guy with secrets...blah blah...

You've read this story before. It's the same "Girl's looking for X, Y helps her, bad things happen, the world is in crisis."



Excuse me, I have a nap to get back to.

[Kristijan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ovo je prvi ark priče o Roche Limit, maloj koloniji koja se nalazi na udeljenoj planeti. Priča deluje pomalo klišeizirano - anomalija na nebu kojoj se ne zna uzrok ni svrha, devojka koja dolazi sa Zemlje na koloniju da bi našla svoju sestru, mladić koji traži svoju bivšu devojku, mnogo tajni, mnogo ucena, nečega što liči na zombije,... - ali uopšte nije loše. Ima duh Blade Runnera i ostalih (SF)noir dela. Kao što su već neki prepoznali, ima tu i elemenata Klarkove Odiseje ali i nečega što podseća na Pulmanova Mračna tkanja, a sve to začinjeno sa mrvicom tarantinovskog samurajskog nasilja...
Interesantno, drži pažnju, dobar artwork. Realna ocena 3.5

[Charlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

A scifi noir where the sci is questionable, the fi is uninspired, and the noir just plain falls flat. I found very little to like about this except the concept's potential that I felt could have been executed so much better. Apparently it's a trilogy, but I have no desire to continue.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roche Limit was another Image Comics graphic novel I picked up while attending Wondercon. I was looking for space horror oriented stories and this book looked promising, but as I got into reading it, it fell into the sci-fi/noir realm of storytelling. It had some unique visual layouts; ultimately, I disappointed by the verbose narrative that was too slow, disjointed subplots, and an art style that did not appeal to my tastes. In addition, I felt the characters lacked the depth required for the serious tone set by this story.

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good concept, poor execution. Way too much lecturing and telling and talking. Poor usage of the comic book medium.

[Anthony Vicino · Rating 2 out of 5]

A’ight, so let’s give ya’ll a synopsis 8th grade book report style:

Roche Limit is a book about space. People fly far away to a different galaxy. A billionaire pays for this. He builds a death-star type colony next to a black hole.

Ugh, this is dreck. Quick aside, why do schools make writing book reports (or writing in general) a painfully horrific exercise in futility? Seriously, writing is fun, but thinking back on my middle and high school years and the writing exercises inflicted upon our poor innocent minds. I dunno, it’s almost as though we were prisoners of war being punished preemptively for atrocities yet to be committed. I mean, they weren’t entirely wrong. Text messaging pretty much ushered in an alphabet genocide.

But still, I’d rather take a forest’s worth of bamboo shoots up the fingernails than go back to 8th grade English.

Anyways, that’s my baggage. Back to Roche Limit. Here’s the skinny, (or the chubby, depending on your preference. I don’t discriminate. I’m like Burger King, have it your way.)

Anyhoo, we got ourselves an enigmatic billionaire who dreams of exploring the cosmos.

So what’s he do?

Oh, you know. He goes out into space, locates himself what the smart folks back home refer to as a “mysterious energy anomaly” (no shit, this is what the back-cover says), and sets up a colony. They call this colony Roche Limit which is the distance a moon must be from its planet so as not to get guzzled down said planet’s gravitational well. Honestly, the name really has nothing to do with anything occurring in the story.

This colony is built on the cusp of this “mysterious energy anomaly”, which is their way of saying “a black hole that doesn’t behave like a black hole”. Nobody knows what the hell this thing is, but that doesn’t stop them from setting up shop right next to it. And, also, let’s not forget that this is clear across the galaxy so getting there isn’t exactly a leisurely jaunt.

Now Roche Limit has issues right off the back, mostly on account of the fact that there are no police and the company who built the colony decided to hire exclusively ex-convicts to work the station. Okay, now this is some more of “my” baggage, but it really bothers me when writers use “ex-convicts” for an easy out. I readily acknowledge the fact that there is a high re-offending (Now I know how those Storm Troopers felt in Star Trek Gate ’cause I’m not entirely sure this is the word, or droids, I’m looking for) rate but that doesn’t mean they should be the automatic scapegoat for “oh shit, this society over here collapsed in on itself and itr’s all because those ex-convicts are falling back on their well-established patterns of behavior!”

Okay, come to think of it, maybe I don’t have much leg to stand on here, but it still bugs me. Not nearly as much as the fact that this company investing billions of dollars in interstellar travel and cross-galaxy colonization is manning these stations with convicts. Who’s dumb-ass idea is that anyhow?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t give the con’s a chance, but, I don’t know, maybe a couple people with technical skills would be useful?

Let’s forget about the convict slathered colony for a moment and focus on one of the main driving points of the story. A girl has gone missing so her sister has flown out from Earth to find her. We discover along the way that Roche Limit has devolved into a cesspool of crime. It’s being run by the slumlords and you’ll pretty much get shived with a toothbrush the moment you step off your shuttle.

Moral of the story? Don’t go to Roche Limit. If you do, maybe consider wearing some stab proof clothing.

We’ve got ourselves a real lawless state of affairs over here and nobody really cares, until we discover that more than one girl has gone missing and now, you know what, one of our crime lords simply finds that unacceptable. She’s got one eye and a heart of gold.

Oh, and also there is this other guy who was dating the sister who disappeared, so he’s helping to find her ’cause he’s not your stereotypical quick wit, hard to love, easy to hate rogueish good guy who pretends he’s badass but secretly deep down he’s got a soft nougat center. Nope, he’s not that at all. He’s a genuinely original character. Promise.

Ha! Just kidding, I totally lied! He’s a walking cliche.

Ya know, I’m getting carried away, and for that I apologize. There is more to the plot, but I don’t really feel like talking about it anymore ’cause the whole damned thing is so disjointed. It bops all over the place with no rhyme or reason, dropping you in and out of situations with characters you’ve never met and have hardly any sympathy for killing them off, or they go into some monologuish diatribe about their life and motivations.

And that might be the thing that bothered me the most about Roche Limit. The dialogue (which, excluding the artwork, is the most important part of a graphic novel) was just horrendous. Everybody spoke in these long drawn out speeches about life and death and space and exploration and dreams and chasing dreams and butterflies and what happens when you stop chasing dreams and misguided desires and what it means to be human and blah blah friggin’ blah.

In the end the story fell flat for me. The artwork was passable, but not nearly good enough to pull its weight and that lame-sauce storyline.

Save yourself the trouble. Stay away from Roche Limit.

Original review available at OneLazyRobotBlog.com

[Fantasy Literature · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roche Limit (Volume 1): Anomalous is an excellent science fiction comic book and the first of a projected three volumes, though this first volume really does stand alone as a fully completed storyline: There is no cliffhanger, though future volumes will apparently take us back to the world of Roche Limit. The second volume is already available in trade, and the first issue of the third story arc has already been published. The story takes place in the future in a small colony on a small planet. The colony has been around for about twenty years, and there is already an extreme divide between the wealthy and the working laborers. In addition, ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Jesse A · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ill give it credit for trying something kinda new. The scifi-noir-zombie angle isn't a road oft traveled but probably for a reason. Just something missing.

[Tsacha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world is interesting, but everyone spouts their very similar philosophy to each other and empty space constantly. No one has hope. No one believes in a higher being. Souls exist, but ah who cares? The main duo, Alex and Sonya, seemed like the most interesting since they were trying to find Sonya's sister Bekkah. The founder of the colony spouting about how life doesn't matter before his suicide didn't add anything to the book. Everyone seems to be fine with the world going to shit, yet they actively try to not let that happen...for some reason?

Having so many side-plots going on is a bit weird, but at least Alex and Sonya get the "page-time" they deserve. The two teens and Gracie's agents are the least interesting stories to follow.

At the beginning and end the art is good, but in the middle it's sloppy and blends together.

[Anne-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Great artwork - very detailed and gave a gritty atmosphere. Although sometimes hard to differentiate some of the faces ('hardened white men' characters can look really similar, okay).

The writing was strong and the plot was well developed (complex without being difficult to comprehend... unless you start reading it when you're extra tired, which was the case for me...). I really liked the mystery element and think there's a lot of room to grow this world/premise in the sequel.

Also the interstitials were excellent.

While it's a great reading experience, I don't know how much it'll stay with me from an originality or impact perspective.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting story full of existential dread and science.

[Aron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but not great either. It had its moments, & i like the idea that each volume in this series is kind of a stand alone story about Roche Limit so I'm probably gonna read Vol. 2 at least.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible story about ambition and failure, sprinkled with a bit of hopelessness. There is some really good dialogue in here, some of which may be quotable for the readers who live very depressing lives (show of hands, please). The story is well paced and features a lot of insight into the milieu of Roche Limit.

The artwork seemed a little off after the first issue. The characters seem very stiff and some of the mechinical designs are flat and boring. I would have liked some more expression and a bit more action in the poses. However, the art didn't distract from the story, so no real complaints there.

What really bothered me was the colors in the novel itself. It is very dark! I have a feeling that the colors were like hat solely to push the bleak story, but the inserts and covers inside were bright. Seemed a bit off. Also, many may not notice this, but the outlines for the text bubbles and boxes in the earlier portion of the novel are way too small (1px). It looks really weird. Thankfully it was enlarged later on, but I would have preferred they changed it for the graphic novel release.

tl; dr This book may not be for everyone. It's dark and it's bleak, but it is a very good story that leads to an expected, but appropriately satisfying conclusion.

Special thanks to Third Eye Comics in Annaoplis, MD for inviting the author to do a signing (and having a sale on the series). I likely wouldn't have read it otherwise, but it was a great, albiet depressing experience. =)

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

You could tell the author had put a lot of thought into the worldbuilding of this one, because the whole thing is one giant exposition-dump. There are literally pages of tiny print prose scattered throughout the volume explaining various things about the colony, its founders, the drug made there, and the anomaly it was built next to. Even outside of those sections, I feel like there is a lot of heavy-handed narration and characters explaining things to each other. Not that the information wasn't interesting, but I very much wish it had been incorporated into the story naturally. As is, I felt more like I was attending a lecture on the world rather than actually living in it.

It didn't help that the characters all felt really shallow. There were also far too many of them. For example, if you took the one-eyed woman and her crew out of the story, I feel like the plot wouldn't have changed at all. So what was the point of them being there? We should really have just focused on cop lady, drug maker, lost sister, and maybe some villains. (If you can't tell, I didn't bother to learn anyone's names.) Because we never spent enough time with ANYBODY for me to get attached to any of them. So when things happen to them, I didn't really care.

It's rare for a graphic novel to feel like a slog, but this one really did. The ideas were okay enough, but the over-explanation and bland characters just made this a chore.

[Alex Sarll]

At first I had this down as yet another slice of SF noir; just like Southern Cross , it follows an investigator tracking her sister, who went missing on a run-down space colony, while something vaguely Lovecraftian festers in the background. Unlike that series, it doesn't have quite such pretty art (more a sub-Criminal feel). The writing, too, is littered with niggling errors, from grammatical mistakes to style glitches in the non-fiction inserts. There are even problems with the physics (both in the sense of the interstellar travel times, and the more mundane fights &c). So it should be surplus to requirements, shouldn't it? Not quite. There's a real intelligence at work on the conceptual framework, in which humanity is more interested in a drug that recaptures the past than in the future represented by a space colony. They may not be saying it with all the elegance one might like, but this team do have something new to say about our collective abandonment of tomorrow.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's rare that I don't finish a book, but I just couldn't keep interested enough to bother with Roche Limit. The design work is very attractive and the art is solid, but noir sci-fi's been done so many times in comics that doing it again requires a unique angle. Instead, we get bland characters, stilted dialogue, hoary old noir cliches and uninteresting infodumps leaving the overused juxtaposition to carry all the weight on its own. Beautiful visuals wasted on an empty, faceless story which comes off as little more than a somnambulant pastiche of Dean Motter's "Mr. X."

[Emma Darcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

strong concept, but didn't quite pull it off... I'm still going to give the next volume a chance because I think it has some potential

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why this comic has as low a rating as it does.

[Scott Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the biggest, most ambitious comic book I've read in a long time. It feels, to me, to be an ambitious attempt to do far more than tell a good story, self-consciously striving for huge questions with a mix of cynicism and romanticism, belief in humanity and reflection of its worst qualities that often train wrecks in the hands of weak creators. Moreci and Charles are not weak creators. I'm not entirely certain where they're headed, but this is the kind of reach-past-what-we-know writing that can't be entirely contained in realism and so spills over into the fantastic that in some fashion deals as much with the possible as the realized.

Roche Limit--the series title--is the name of a colony on an earth-like dwarf planet called Dispater established at the very edge of technical possibility in "nearby" galaxy at some point in the future. Mankind being mankind, we muck it up, and there's a deep noir layer over the surface of the very realistically detailed slum-world the colony has become by the time the book opens. The characters are effectively nourish, the lost good girl in a bad place, the 70% criminal (with a heart of gold) as romantic interest, a strangely philosophical mob boss, and a discovery of a scientific anomaly that just might allow for physical location and removal of human souls.

It's a bit of a mess in spots, and I'm not sure that even the creators know everywhere they want to go yet, but the ambition is impressive, and (again, to me) appealing.

[Alex E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roche Limit is a book that has alot of big, interesting ideas. Things ranging from a lone human colony, which happens to be located next to a mysterious "black hole" event, to a drug that completely envelops the human mind, to the disappearance and appearance of 3 astronauts who are no longer human, the book throws alot at you in 5 issues. And while they are interesting in their own right, it feels like at times, the book bites off more than it can chew.

Our main character, Alex, is unable to leave the colony, but is trying to find Bekah who he loves and has mysteriously disappeared. And while this plot point keeps the story grounded, I felt that it was almost a sidelined plot point in comparison to the big ideas established in the rest of the book.

The writing is solid and pretty well placed, though at times, it does become convoluted due to the many plot points occurring at the same time.

The art is a plus, as it lends itself well to the "gritty" feel of the colony, that has become in essence a cesspit of crime and corruption.

I will stick with it to see where the story goes and hope that the book can stick the landing.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept pushing this one aside, thinking it was 1 person searching alone, feeling isolation on space. It's not like that!

I enjoyed the narrator's voice, but this book needed more showing instead of telling and maybe some smoother transitions. I'm sure it would have been better it had more room for more showing. A few minor characters could have developed more too. There were 2 I forgot what their connection was.

When you have about 2 issues/chapters left, you think it might continue on to a second vol. But this story was just 1 volume so it feels like elements take a shortcut to wrap up the story. The last pages wrap up fast, minimizing the emotional impact. You're not sure what certain parts meant.

It was still interesting. So I recommend it for anyone seeking more space/philosophical/worldbuilding sci-fi, knowing that it'll be a fraction of what it could be.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this might have been really interesting science fantasy. Worldbuilding was good, doled out nice and slow: a black hole-ish anomaly orbited by a dwarf planet orbiting just outside the Roche Limit (inside which infalling matter gets spaghettified) is the setting for 1) a failing human colony populated by outlaws, 2) a cop's hunt for her missing sister, and 3) a drug dealer's quest for redemption.

But the characters were flat, their motivations nebulous, the artwork terrible, and the metaphysical plot element hokey.

Book Riot recommending Roche Limit as a must-read spacefaring graphic novel is quite a stretch. I've already checked out the other two volumes on Hoopla, so I guess I'll read them. But man, volume one is a disappointment.

[Trike · Rating 1 out of 5]

An initially interesting concept rendered in a very pedestrian way. The faux science and pseudo-religion don’t really make sense, and wrapping it in a standard noir story without any sci-fi elements at all means it could’ve been set anywhere in the past century. Putting it on a space station orbiting a black hole is pointless other than using the setting to “explain” the supernatural stuff.

In that regard it reminds me of the terrible Event Horizon, the only movie I’ve ever seen that gets both astrophysics *and* metaphysics wrong at the same time. This book is very surface-level and doesn’t make good use of its setting at all. Why are they driving regular cars and waving around regular handguns on the other side of the Galaxy in the future? Why are there cars on a space station? It’s kind of lazy.

[cauldronofevil · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t even remember getting this comic.

It’s a graphic novel by Image.

It’s pretty. Not my kind of artwork. Rather… I don’t know, just not very dynamic. But not bad. And Chad liked it, so that’s something.

Pick a road, pick a path. But go on the wrong one once and, believe me… the forking paths get less and less appearing as you go.

”Moscow, I can truly give a shit about anything you just said. Most of it doesn’t even make sense to me.”

That’s on page 37 and honestly nothing about the art or story so far makes me think that it’s going to get any better. I’m out.

I’m giving this book 1 star and the finger.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Utterly generic nearly across the board. Tough lady cop & sad sack man protagonists in a noirish find-the-girl story. It did execute it's ending decently, but squanders nearly all the potential from the ideas it presents.
What did come through for me somewhat was the sense of place, in the palpable & desperate isolation of the Roche Limit colony. It's a setting I would revisit, which is good since I picked up all 3 volumes at the same time.

[Nicholas Driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comic about a crazy and violent colony in space built on the edge of a weird cosmic anomaly, and there are zombies and a sort of mystery around women getting kidnapped and lots of philosophical naval gazing.

I found this book to be pretty tiresome. Should have been a lot better than it was. I am not sure that the concept was great--not a lot of it made for much sense--but it is ambitious, which I can appreciate, even if it doesn't succeed very well for me.

[Matthew J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been trying to read a bunch of comics I picked up years ago for one reason or another. Well, here we go. I'm a sucker for Sci-Fi, but I just couldn't get into this one. It feels like little bits of other things I've read or seen, but it doesn't feel like it quite reaches cohesion. I also really don't care for the art & panel work. It all just left me a bit cold. Still, it felt like there was some potential. I've got the second volume, so here's hoping it's a bit better.