I’ve never read Orson Scott Card’s ENDER’S GAME, but now that I’ve read the Marvel Comics adaptation, ENDER’S GAME: BATTLE SCHOOL, I can see why the original 1985 novel is considered a modern-day classic of science fiction. It may center around a juvenile, but this is far from greasy kids’ stuff.
Ender Wiggin is your everyday 6-year-old boy, except that he’s been recruited by the International Fleet to train in the fight against an alien race known as the Formics. This entails being plucked from his two-parent home, where Ender lives with his loving sister, Valentine, and his hateful brother, Peter, and whisked via shuttle up to the stars.
From the start, it’s obvious Ender is special, and Fleet superiors’ uttering of such only makes Ender the subject of scorn and ridicule. But he can hold his own and return with a clenched fist only when needed. Like his fellow students, he’s quickly immersed in a series of high-tech war games; unlike his fellow students, he quickly advances into another platoon, which only earns him more enemies.
Ender plays by the rules, but also around them when it comes to strategy in simulations, making him an excellent cadet. The only thing causing his edges to fray are dreams of unresolved conflict with his brother, and greatly missing his sister.
Christopher Yost’s adaptation keeps events moving quickly, but not so fast that the emotions get lost. Pieces of this story are disturbing, more so since kids are involved, as their cruelty reminded me a bit of LORD OF THE FLIES, but in space. Comics are a format in which sci-fi is usually boiled down to its simplest elements of zap-pow-zoom, but Yost approaches this material with a determined seriousness, and his dedication to telling that kind of story shows through. As illustrated by Pasqual Ferry, the pages are bright (even in the realm of deep, dark outer space), slick and urgent.
Card’s 1999 sequel forms the basis for Marvel’s subsequent spin-off adaptation, ENDER’S SHADOW: BATTLE SCHOOL. In many way, its structure mirrors that of GAME, but spends more time on Earth, and with a markedly different protagonist.
His name is Bean, and he’s a 5-year-old street urchin among a gang of them who look out for each other and fight for food. Subscribing to some sort of moral code, he’s different than the rest of the homeless kids, and a nun sees something special in him, and thus, he, too, is recruited by I.F., and he, too, undergoes the same kind of condescension from the others as Ender.
Because of this, Bean becomes obsessed with Ender, and spends his time hacking into the I.F. computers to learn all he can about him and the organization, rather than bonding with his fellow trainees. Essentially, it’s the same story, different character.
This scrawny Bean may be even more sympathetic than Ender, and he’s in good hands with writer Mike Carey, whose script here is more lucid than others of his to which I’ve been exposed. Sebastian Fiumara’s art is purposely gritty in every way that Ferry’s is polished, reflective of Bean’s plight.
With GAME and SHADOW, the writers and artists’ approaches are divergent enough that both graphic novels are worth reading. Both end on a cliffhanger, as well, paving the way for their current COMMAND SCHOOL series. —Rod Lott
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