There’s multiple things you’re mixing up here. There’s the “up” in the global coordinate reference frame. This could be based on the local system, though that makes entering and exiting the system a tiny bit more difficult. More likely it’d be based on galactic coordinates.
There’s also the ship reference frame in the comic. This probably won’t be oriented towards the global coordinate system. It’ll be oriented towards whatever the engines, sensors, and gravity need. Because the ships will all be in orbit, their orientations will probably be changing constantly relative to other ships and the global reference frame. There’s no reason to orient in a single direction and lots of reasons not to (it wastes energy, points your sensors away from the things you want to see, etc).
There’s multiple things you’re mixing up here. There’s the “up” in the global coordinate reference frame. This could be based on the local system, though that makes entering and exiting the system a tiny bit more difficult. More likely it’d be based on galactic coordinates.
There’s also the ship reference frame in the comic. This probably won’t be oriented towards the global coordinate system. It’ll be oriented towards whatever the engines, sensors, and gravity need. Because the ships will all be in orbit, their orientations will probably be changing constantly relative to other ships and the global reference frame. There’s no reason to orient in a single direction and lots of reasons not to (it wastes energy, points your sensors away from the things you want to see, etc).