Retrospective: Seeker 3000 (Marvel)
"Behind us, the world we knew is dead, but ahead of us lie the stars, waiting with untold promise, unseen wonders ... and untold dangers."
The arkship Seeker 3000 is to be the first spacecraft to leave the solar system in search of new worlds. Earth's government, 'The Six' (representing six continents) have chosen a crew and also placed aboard a number of cryogenically frozen embryonic cells as a source of future colonists. The vast ship contains internal ecological environments and will serve as home for generations of star-farers.
Captain Jordan Shaw knows the terrible truth, however. The gene bank contains a non-representative selection of humanity; relatives and friends of the Six. Also, the Six know that the Sun is due to go nova, killing everyone in the solar system. Seeker 3000 is the only hope that any of the human race will survive...
Seeker 3000 was a pilot issue released by Marvel in 1978 with writer Doug Moench and artist Tom Sutton. At that time the company was trying to get hold of the rights to the Star Trek franchise but had not yet succeeded. Trek was still a popular show (originally broadcast in the 1960s but regularly re-run on TV and with a huge following). Add to this the huge success of the first Star Wars film the previous year, and science fiction was seen as a lucrative genre for the comics giant to venture into.
Opting to create their own sci-fi blockbuster, they devised the story of a giant arkship and its epic voyage. The dramatic story set the stage for dazzling adventures to come... and that was it. Soon after publication Marvel finally acquired the rights to the first Star Trek movie (the Motion Picture), making Seeker redundant.
Twenty years later in 1998 Marvel revived Seeker 3000 with a four-issue continuation of the original story, written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edgington with artist Andrew Currie. Fittingly, two decades have passed on the arkship and no new home for humanity has been found. The original captain is succeeded by his two sons, one natural (or 'brat') from his marriage to his first officer, the other a clone (or 'vat') from his own DNA. Also aboard is a community of telepaths (calling themselves 'Pathfinders'), led by Phaedra, one of the original crew and the organic heart of Seeker's warp drive.
The ship has been upgraded over the years (now looking less 70s disco-sleek than the original and more Star Wars style guts'n'bolts) and the uniforms are a little less flamboyant than before, but the fun vibe of the pilot issue has been preserved.
Our intrepid heroes finally find strange new life in the depths of space... but will it be friendly?
Lots of action ensues with artfully-designed spacecraft and some imaginative aliens. The narrative also has depth, exploring the social and political aspects of a despotic government and the treatment of minorities (telepaths, feared by 'normals', are branded with facial tattoos from birth). This plus the inclusion of people of colour among the senior crew was maybe a little too much for the racially squeamish late Seventies...
The story is high space opera and delivered with the appropriate hyperboles and over-the-top escapades. The artists deliver emotionally punchy characters to drive this along, Sutton with some very exotic outfits (the villain sports a beret and a cape like some evil mashup between a Shakespearian actor and a Beatnik musician), Currie with bulky space armour and a grittier finish. The shuttlecraft ("Mules') are a pleasing design; cute, non-aerodynamically bulbous vehicles that are nevertheless rendered with slick mechanical detail.
This is a satisfying slice of 70s/90s nostalgia with its own unique style despite the obvious influences, with themes that go beyond the safe clichés favoured in those times. Boldly going into the great unknown, humanity faces many unknown dangers ... not least of which are those brought along for the ride from home.
Zak Webber
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