“Marooned” is the first story to told from the Unity Macroverse, and is set in the year 2390 – beginning with a mining incident on the Jupiter moon on Ganymede. The United Nations of Earth (“UNE”) despatches the UNEs (“UNE Starship”) Tigris, its prized tactical frigate helmed by Captain Olivia Chu – to investigate.
"Marooned" was published as a 3-part graphic novel, which was done as a "market test" to gauge reception. Each part of "Marooned" included a component of the UNEs Mekong shuttle scaled model.
Marooned Part 1[]
The Marooned story originated as a general story idea by an intern at E.S.A ("English Speaking Asians, not to be mistaken with the European Space Agency - although it's coincidentally cool), and was subsequently expanded and fleshed out into a full-blown story by the team at E.S.A. Meaning to act as an “introduction” to Marooned, being the initial story within the Unity Macroverse – the story was split into 3 “bite-sized parts”, with Marooned (Part 1) being created and only consisting of a total of 24 pages (including cover). The UNEs Tigris is featured on the cover of Marooned (Part 1), together with Captain Olivia Chu and the rest of the Tigris crew.
In fulfilling the objective of promoting local small and microbusinesses from within the community by securing involvement – Marooned (Part 1) included a total of 7 pages of space dedicated to advertising. A total of 14 advertisers signed up and included their ads in Marooned (Part 1), which included a board game cafe, camping site operator, printing service provider, record store, 2 NGOs, 2 colleges, a collectibles museum, a board game developer, and a number of others. Five of these businesses have as to date, become Unity Macroverse retail partners, carrying Unity Macroverse titles and merchandise to sell to their customers.
Marooned (Part 1) was printed on thick, glossy paper and included a separately carded component of the UNES Mekong. As the “maiden story” to introduce the Unity Macroverse, Marooned (parts 1 to 3) were issued in this “semi-premium” collectible format.
Marooned Part 2[]
Marooned (Part 2) was released a month after Marooned (Part 1) in May 2019. Its cover was graced by the Malayan Rangers, an elite military group crucial to the Marooned storyline. The cover also includes illustrations of the Lubok Antu (Rangers Dropship) and Matsukaze (Rangers Mechanized Heavy Infantry Support Vehicle / “Mech”).
For Part 2, the total number of advertisement pages was reduced to 3, (from a total of 7 in Part 1) to make room for more content. Two of the advertisers in Marooned (Part 2) have become Unity Macroverse Retail Partners. The total number of pages in Part 2 were also increased to 32.
Marooned Part 3[]
Marooned (Part 3) was launched in June 2019, following Marooned (Part 1) in April and Marooned (Part 2) in May the same year. Part 3 acted as the closing chapter of the Marooned storyline, which was the catalyst for a number of separate Macroverse stories focusing on the Malayan Rangers, and crew of the UNES Tigris in separate story arcs – in their separate adventures subsequent to the events that occurred in the Marooned story. Various other separate (but connected) story arcs also commenced after the events of Marooned (Part 3).
For the first time, a page from the content of a graphic novel was taken and used as the cover of the title. A panel illustrating the two warring factions, the United Nations of Earth (“UNE”) and Mars Administrative Corporation (“MAC”) preparing for armed conflict, was used as the cover for Marooned (Part 3).
As with Marooned (Part 2), Part 3 had allocated only 3 pages of advertising space, to allow for more content. Also for the first time, the Unity Macroverse had included an advertisement from an independent rock band from Singapore in a graphic novel publication.
UNEs Mekong Shuttle Model Parts (3D Printed)