Preview: ‘Outlaws Volume 1: The Cartel Of The Peaks’ — Sci-Fi Addressing Society’s Ills Once More

Spinning out from Sylvain Runberg and Serge Pellé’s brilliant Orbital series, Outlaws looks deeper into the murky, nasty world of exploitation and immigration…

The eight-volumes of  Orbital series dealt with sci-fi on a big scale, dealing with the aftermath of the Human-Sandjarr war and both race’s entry into the intergalactic peacekeeping organisation. Outlaws, at least after this first volume, seems to promise a more confined, more personal approach to sci-fi, as the first book, The Cartel of the Peaks, written by Runberg still but with new artist Eric Chabbert, deals with the hot topic of immigration – and the exploitation of those brave enough, desperate enough to consider making the journey in 2279.

One of these is young human Kristina Swany, arriving on the planet Drenn onboard a freighter…

All she wants is a new life, a new start, but she’s already enmeshed in a world where she’s just another expendable commodity for the criminal cartel, a cartel who will drive her and her fellow illegal immigrants into slavery, forced to do dangerous work in terrible conditions. They’re told that they’re just working off the fare, but it soon becomes obvious that they’re never getting away from the Cartel.

Her one way out comes at a terrible price, joining up with another outsider, one of the cartel’s own who has his own reasons to get out of the life. But they soon come to realise that the only life they have is free of the cartels, free of the IDO and its police… outcast.

All in all, it’s a fine bit of sci-fi that really sets up the series nicely – very similar in tone to Orbital of course, given the shared writer, and with art that, although not quite up there with Pelle’s work, still does enough to get over the horrors of immigration, slavery, and the life these two are attempting to escape.

Outlaw: The Cartel of the Peaks

Written by Sylvain Runberg

Art by Eric Chabbert, translated by Jerome Saincantin.

Out now from Cinebook (originally published in 2022 by Dupuis)

Now, a little preview for you…