I suspect that NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft was one of science fiction's greatest heartbreakers. Before the flier found the red planet devoid of life, sci-fi fans could imagine Mars as a lush world teeming with possibly intelligent beings, the ready backdrop for Edgar Rice Burroughs' rowsing pulp epics, C.S. Lewis' theological explorations, and Ray Bradbury's first contact vignettes. Modern Mars fiction tends to paint our planetary neighbor as less Heart of Darkness than Wild, Wild West: vast, desolate, and inhabitable by only the hardiest and most innovative settlers.

Sometimes, though, we need to take a retrofuturistic vacation to that era of little green men and once again dream of life on Mars. And that's where Tom Dell'Aringa takes us twice a week with Marooned. Captain John is a Captain Kirk send-up, a sort of family-friendly Zapp Brannigan who has crashed on Mars, damaging his radio and finding he has insufficient fuel for the trip home. His sole crewman is Asimov, a long-suffering robot who, despite the name, thinks the Second Law of Robotics doesn't obligate him to obey his moronic commander. Fortunately, the pair are quickly discovered by Ugo, a friendly Martian native (who uncannily resembles Mike from Monsters, Inc.), and soon befriend an orphaned Martian girl named Ril. Together, they battle science fictional threats and try to find a way to get Captain John and Asimov back to Earth.

Dell'Aringa employs a simple, retro that fits neatly with his pre-Mariner premise, occasional slapstick humor, and G-rated content. It has a children's book charm that hits a warm, happy place in my id, but combined with overly familiar character and background designs, it threatens to turn antiseptic. The strip greatly benefits from Dell'Aringa's experiments with the art further down the line: playing with full-page framing, attempts to make the color scheme a bit grittier, adding dimension to the characters, and more risks with his visual language. Still, these experiments could use a firm shove into weirder territory. We're on imaginary Mars, after all, where the sky doesn't even approach the limit.

Marooned's lack of an anchor isn't merely aesthetic. I can relate the overall plot, but even with a full arc concluded, I couldn't tell you precisely what the comic is about, what the creative vision is behind it. The tropes of the egotistical incompetent and the wisecracking AI sidekick are familiar ones, and Dell'Aringa has done little thus far to distinguish Captain John and Asimov from the similarly mismatched protagonists currently cruising through the cosmos. The comic oozes earnestness, but the jokes are too safe, the plotline too linear, and the characters a bit two-dimensional. There are, however, flashes of meaty brilliance, such as when an adversary pulls out his weapon of ultimate destruction, which, it turns out, not only resembles a Rubik's Cube, but also is named for one of the Internet's greatest nutjob websites. Dell'Aringa either needs to root Marooned to some overarching theme -- an homage to Golden Age science fiction, a humorous examination of modern science fiction through a retrofuturistic lens (or vice versa), a space opera whose traditional conventions are repeatedly twisted and subverted -- or simply let his freak flag fly higher.

Don't get me wrong; there is a lot of talent and enthusiasm behind Marooned. It's just that all that talent and enthusiasm haven't yet lent the comic a clear, cohesive shape. Putting the comic through the wringer is almost unfair as Dell'Aringa is new to comics and learning on the job, in public, and we're all watching him find his footing. I just hope he isn't afraid to stumble along the way.

[Marooned]