As you may have gathered from my post on Blackhawks: The Great Leap Gorward last month, I’ve been revisiting older sci-fi comics with the new hindsight of someone living under a looming era of techno-fascism by chatbot.With that in mind, today I’m spotlighting a handful of other graphic novels that deserve to be rediscovered:
CITY OF SILENCE
‘The future is bad for you.
This is Stealth – the city that survives on silence.’
The opening words of City of Silence don’t just introduce the comic’s setting: a delirious, debauched city where people have become so addicted to technological innovation that they’re basically junkies endangering the world with their mad inventions. More importantly, those early panels instantly establish the comic’s *tone*: every single line is damn cool, even if some of the concepts feel like a drunken word association game.
As usual with Warren Ellis’ comics, much of the sci-fi is actually quite prescient – written in the mid-1990s, this mini-series anticipated not only some of the darkest directions of internet culture, but also the revival of the authorities’ push to contain the ensuing spread of evil ideas (so, not unlike Blackhawks, the protagonists are agents of a secret police specialized in suppressing irresponsible tech bros and digital trends, which now reads like a parody of Elon Musk’s nightmares). And yet, the spirit of the whole thing is unabashedly cartoony, to the point that an agent suddenly changes into a Santa costume for a few panels just so he can deliver evidence to his chief with an appropriate look. If City of Silence does share the same mindspace as its era’s cyberpunk flicks (such as Strange Days, Johnny Mnemonic, or Ghost in the Shell), it also decidedly draws from a tradition of comics dear to Ellis’ heart, in which the shape of science fiction is brilliantly repurposed into wild surrealism (Johnny Nemo, Really & Truly, GrimJack, Tales from Beyond Science).
Artist Gary Erskine is surely in on the joke, although his style remains deadpan. His designs aren’t distorted or exaggerated enough to necessarily come off as caricature, but neither does Erskine seem to be going for a full-on action vibe. Rather, his static artwork sort of looks like a gallery showcasing the grotesqueries that popped off Ellis’ sick mind, further elaborated in the backmatter, which contains a glossary explaining this world’s weirdest notions (like carnography: ‘snuff movies that culminate in the cadaver(s) being elaborately prepared in a kitchen and eaten’) and even a pastiche of Hunter S. Thompson that prefigures Transmetropolitan.
COUNTERFEIT GIRL
In a corporate-ruled future where people’s personal details are constantly being monitored, rated, and transacted, Libra Kelly illegally traffics fake identities – not just ID credentials, but psychological implants, physical characteristics, personality traits… all of which are especially coveted by underground activists fighting the system. As you may have guessed by such a premise, this is a Peter Milligan comic, combining his pet themes, strange imagination, brain-scrambling plotting, and signature humor (one of the characters is a sentient rash). Milligan’s partners in crime this time around – artist Rufus Dayglo, colorist Dom Regan, and letterer Ellie deVille – throw themselves at the material with gusto, making every page pop while filling the series with easter eggs and scribbled notes (‘This one for Garry Leach!’) in a way that both suitably projects the ADD aesthetics of a publicity-laden webpage and ultimately rewards a careful artwork-focused reread.
In theory, Counterfeit Girl should feel less retrofuturistic than City of Silence, since it’s much more recent (it was serialized on the pages of 2000 AD in 2016) and therefore incorporates more modern tech trends (a lawyer is an app… and the prosecution is an algorithm), but they’re both essentially throwbacks to/updates of the particular brand of cyberpunk inaugurated by William Gibson back in the 1980s. Then again, collapsing identities and, in particular, the figure of the doppelgänger have become core leitmotifs of 21st-century sci-fi nightmares, as seen in movies like Us and Infinity Pool (or, more recently, The Substance).
HABITAT
In a massive, brutalist-looking starship whose society has evolved into castes of cannibals, exoskeleton-wearing security forces, and robot nuns, among others, a young man comes across a powerful laser weapon and all hell breaks loose.
To provide further details would defeat the point of the recommendation, since much of the pleasure of Simon Roy’s comics derives from gradually deciphering all the elaborate worldbuilding as you read along. The other big draw – and the reason for his works’ compulsive re-readability – is to then inhabit these fully formed places, rendered with expansive Mobius-like artwork full of crazy wide angles, Mesoamerican designs, and the sort of panel-to-panel progression where every new page feels like a revelation or a forward-pushing action beat. As a result, Habitat is a genre gem, both intellectually stimulating as science fiction and heart-poundingly exciting as a gory, frantic thriller.
I.D.
Written and drawn by Emma Ríos, I.D. revolves around a group of people about to embark on a dangerous ‘body transplant’ program, their alleged motivations ranging from gender dysphoria to sheer boredom. Fascinating as they are, the practicalities of the technology aren’t what most interests Ríos, who condenses them into an exposition-heavy chapter (and they’re analyzed more carefully in an informative afterword by neurologist Miguel Alberte Woodward, who served as consultant for the book). This is really more of a character piece, focusing on the cast’s identity issues and on the relationships they develop along the way.
Don’t expect a deep dive or an elaborate exploration, though. Each page is very full and very gorgeous, but the beauty of I.D. lies precisely in its ability to convey so much with apparently so little: ultimately a small gesture can speak volumes, a dystopic future can be conjured through a couple of throwaway lines or a sick action scene, and a brief encounter between an unlikely trio feels all the more suggestive because of what is *not* being said…
JEREMY BROOD
When a couple of astronauts come to a faraway planet to check out a call for help (made centuries before), they soon become embroiled in a civil war, especially after one of them – the eponymous Jeremy Brood – gets taken for a long-prophesized messiah. Yet this isn’t just a post-Dune space opera, but rather a post-Heavy Metal indie comic, with all the quintessential trappings of that ‘adult,’ avant-garde take on the genre in the turn towards the 1980s, love ‘em or leave ‘em…
If you are at all curious about this branch of the medium’s sci-fi genealogy, there are worse places to start than with Jeremy Brood. It’s drawn by Richard Corben (one of his many collaborations with writer Jan Strnad) which means that it looks like nothing else out there. It’s highly sexualized, but in a way that feels frank rather than merely titillating or exploitative – like other Corben works, this one seems comfortable with the subject and unashamedly committed to addressing personal kinks. And the irreverence of presenting rituals and religion at the mercy of manipulation and coincidence extends into the overall approach to the narrative, culminating in an offbeat resolution.
SOCIAL FICTION
A long overdue collection and re-translation of the 1970s-80s’ work of Chantal Montellier, one of France’s most remarkable comic creators, Social Fiction is a fascinating mix of totalitarian dystopias whose technological predictions aren’t always spot on (the old-school, post-Orwell vision of state surveillance seems quaint compared to the current omnipresent provision of personal data to private companies), but whose social critique remains depressingly on point (class, racial, and gender discrimination continue to organize society, from access to resources to reproductive rights). Like Erskine would go on to do in City of Silence, Montellier renders a dirty future of oppressive metropolises through clean lines and detailed backgrounds, each panel a clear picture delivered with punk assertiveness.
This amazing book collects three works, translated by the poet Geoffrey Brock. The first, ‘Wonder City,’ a romcom/paranoid thriller about genetic control, is arguably the one that has gained more unpredictable layers over time, as some of it now reads like a precursor to post-covid anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories. The second tale, ‘Shelter,’ in which 823 people get locked in a shopping mall for years, feels like both a timeless parable and like a very specific product of the Cold War zeitgeist (not only because the premise concerns a nuclear attack, but also because of the way the story addresses the relationship and tensions between communism, authoritarianism, and security). The third part, ‘1996,’ is my favorite, as it consists of a series of vignettes and short stories with an even darker satirical edge.
All in all, this is a must-read book for fans of past imaginations of the future, further enriched through an introduction by Brock and a final interview with Montellier. Also: there are talking cats.
I’ve finally caught up with the cartoon show Batman: Caped Crusader. Other than some very nasty killings, it doesn’t add much – visually or dramatically – to the 1990s’ Batman: The Animated Series, although admittedly this is a pretty high bar. That series perfected elements from across the franchise’s rich mythology (most notably from Englehart’s and Roger’s iconic run in the late ‘70s), including a witty take on the Alfred-Bruce dynamics (that perennial stand-in for the UK-US special relationship) and a tragically humanizing spin on much of the rogues’ gallery, which embraced this world’smoral ambiguity. In turn, for all the promise of a return to the roots, echoing the aesthetics of Batman’s very first comics from the early ‘40s (albeit now set in a context with much less racial, gender, and sexual discrimination), Caped Crusader strives to reinvent the wheel. Sure, the result is still as slick a piece of super-noir as you’d expect from the likes of Bruce Timm, Ed Brubaker, and Greg Rucka, but while I kept waiting for something to blow my mind, I ended up settling for a comfy cover version of familiar beats, enjoying the show’s new riffs on the Dark Knight’s classic storylines and supporting cast (particularly its twisted Harley Quinn).
Nothing about it beats the comics, though. So, without further ado, here is a reminder that Batman splashes can be awesome:
This time around, to mark Will Eisner Week, our reminder that comics can be awesome spotlights a trio of stylish title pages from Eisner’s groundbreaking creation, The Spirit (not necessarily drawn by Eisner himself, but all of them following his signature move of integrating the series’ logo into the images in ingenious and inventive ways).
It was quite a break, but I’m back to the project of recommending movies and comics for fans of the Coen Brothers’ filmography. Let’s see how long I can stick to it this time!
Following the rollicking misadventures of a trio of convicts on the run in 1930s’ Mississippi, O Brother, Where art Thou? is the most Coen film since Barton Fink, in the sense that it escapes easy categorization beyond being a happy confluence of the brothers’ recurring themes and style. Sure, you can describe it as a pure comedy (there is certainly no shortage of jokes, sight gags, and broad performances), or even as a musical comedy (given how often folk songs spill over from the background soundtrack into the narrative itself), but there are so many extra layers to appreciate… The film is packed both with the depicted era’s imagery (from bank robbers and bible sellers all the way to racial persecution and populist political campaigns) *and* with multiple allusions to Homer’s epic poem Odyssey. And then, in a further metafictional level, there are a number of references to Preston Sturges’ 1941 classic film Sullivan’s Travels, in which a successful comedy director, John L. Sullivan, was so committed to doing a serious drama about the Great Depression – called O Brother, Where Art Thou? – that he disguised himself as a tramp and set out to discover what it was like to live in poverty… only to repeatedly end up in Hollywood! Sturges’ influence has hovered over the Coens’ work from early on (especially in The Hudsucker Proxy), but the intertextuality reaches a whole new pitch here, since the implicit premise is that their 2000 opus could’ve been the very same movie Sullivan wrote (not initially, but after his experiences, some of which are echoed in this film). That said, given the state of the world today, the gesture of exploring the tension between escapism and populism (both within and through the story) has lost none of its resonance.
I can’t resist recommending Sullivan’s Travels itself. Even setting aside the meta dialogue between the two works, Sturges’ movie is steeped in Coen-esque reflexivity and ambiguity: starting out as a truly hilarious farce about the impossibility of properly capturing social misery onscreen, halfway through Sullivan’s Travels paradoxically shifts gears into a quasi-ethnographic, gut-wrenching portrayal of systemic injustice and human suffering, so that the second part of the film either subverts the first one or is subverted by what came before, which preemptively exposed it as inescapably artificial, if not downright hypocritical. This ambiguity extends to the racial dimension (which also occupies a key place in the Coens’ movie), given the remarkably contrasting depictions of a comical black cook early on and a dignified African-American community near the end. The result is fascinating… and how earnestly you take the ending is really only up to you.
Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon is pretty much the missing link between Sullivan’s Travels and O Brother, Where Art Thou?. It’s (beautifully) shot in black & white, like the former, but it was made in 1973, so it adds layers of retrospective critical distance – as well as some tender romanticization – towards the Great Depression, where it is also set. Following a conman and a nine-year-old orphan girl he reluctantly picked up along the way as they travel from Kansas to Missouri, this is another road movie about fast-talkers who aren’t quite as smart as they’d like to believe – and another black comedy that seeks a peculiar tonal balance between amusing interactions and the harshness of the real-world background, imbuing its zany characters with a sense of humanity even among all the awful stuff they do to each other.
Finally, when it comes to comics, I can’t think of a recommendation more appropriate than Rock Candy Mountain.
Rock Candy Mountain #1
Written and drawn by Kyle Starks, this mini-series (republished as a paperback last year) follows a pair of hobos on a surreal – and very funny – quest/chase across the South, in the late 1940s, that shares with O Brother, Where Art Thou? a propensity for quirky dialogue, religious symbols, a prison break, and a tribute to folk music (the whole premise is that the protagonist is looking for the fantastical place described in the titular song). Although nothing can match the impact of the film’s majestic colors, Chris Schweizer also goes for a sepia-toned palette, which together with Stark’s vibrant cartooning makes the comic a visual delight in its own way. That said, as riotous as Rock Candy Mountain consistently is, my favorite bits ended up being in the series’ backmatter, which contained a set of informative essays about the hobos’ code, lore, and organization, as well about some of the Christian mythology the story draws on.
The original Blackhawk comics debuted way back in 1941 and revolved around the missions of an eponymous air squadron battling against the Axis powers during World War II. In typical comics fashion, though, the concept kept getting reinvented every generation or so. I’m actually quite the fan of Howard Chaykin’s reboot in the 1980s(which was also set in WWII, but with a more iconoclastic retrospective outlook), including the follow-up series by Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett – all in all, those comics were a down-and-dirty mix of politics and pulp adventure that both paid tribute to the original and subverted the hell out of it (even if the plotting got a bit messy after a while).
That said, the most radical of all reboots took place in 2011, as part of DC’s overall ‘New 52’ revamp, which dropped the nostalgia angle and relaunched the Blackhawks as a clandestine UN force fighting the most cutting-edge technological threats.
These were all new characters and there weren’t continuity links to previous incarnations, but, intertextually, the use of the name and of a similar logo essentially framed emergent, out-of-control technology as a new fascist-like enemy. And, sure enough, 14 years later, those two threats now seem increasingly connected, which makes this an interesting comic to revisit.
The premise of a whole military unit specialized on waging war against unchecked scientific progress (a literal rage against the machine!) may sound reactionary and luddite, even if you bear in mind that this short-lived series (it only lasted 8 issues, collected in the trade paperback The Great Leap Forward) was operating with outlandish fantastic sci-fi, including tech from the DCU’s extraterrestrial worlds. Looking back at it from the point of view of current debates about AI singularity, powerful social media algorithms, and posthumanism, however, Blackhawks seems to have been ahead of its time, fictionalizing today’s alarmist zeitgeist, as authorities all over the globe have come to realize how destructive and weaponizable cybernetic technological development has become (not to mention the existential debates within the comics industry itself).
To be fair, rather than simply taking skepticism for granted, the series did face the issue head-on in a few instances, addressing the ethical implications of the team’s mandate:
(Presumably, the paperback’s Maoist title was a more subtle allusion to these themes, evoking a history of mass-scale tragedy in the name of rushed progress…)
Except for the sequence above, though, Blackhawks dealt with moral dilemmas in the form of snappy exchanges rather than drawn-out debates. Mike Costa is a pretty smart writer, but one who privileges spectacle and adrenaline over contemplation or introspection.
Here, Costa didn’t go so far as in God Is Dead, where he pushed his style almost to the point of abstraction – that bloody, profanity-laden series (with awesome Jacen Burrows variant covers) kept relentlessly escalating the stakes and suddenly shifting the narrative in new directions (at one point jumping forward over a hundred years) while constantly killing off and replacing the protagonists (and only sometimes bringing them back to life), which suitably created the feel of an unfolding mythological saga of epic proportions. With Blackhawks, Mike Costa wasn’t allowed to develop something this radical: rather than nihilistic destabilization, what we got was still much closer to the reassuringly liberal optimist end of the spectrum typical of mainstream American comics (especially compared to their British counterparts).
Who knows what bold directions the series could’ve taken in time, but the handful of issues that did come out nevertheless delivered some damn cool combat sci-fi. The action-driven storytelling came across as both fearful and enchanted with the wild possibilities of transhumanism and cyber-, nano-, and whatever-else-have-you technology. Like in the comics of Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis, much of the main sense of fun derives from mind-bending kickass lines like: ‘Through technology, we have transcended. We are not made of flesh, we are made of choices.’
Science fiction is a genre that can be as much about exciting aesthetics as about revolutionary ideas, so I love comics that make the most out of the medium’s very materiality, pulling off stuff that you really couldn’t do in cinema or in a prose novel. This approach has given us plenty of critical darlings, like Matt Kindt’s Revolver, Jeff Lemire’s Trillium, or Jonathan Hickman’sPax Romana, which cleverly put every aspect of the books in the service of their concepts, from non-linear page layouts to the very design of the page numbers or chapter breaks…
Blackhawks was never as daringly experimental, which may explain its short duration and absence of lasting impact. For a comic about innovative threats, its visuals weren’t *weird* enough to be memorable, which is not to say that we didn’t get some neat futuristic vistas bursting with breakneck energy and wonder along the way… In the character designs by Ken Lashley and Jim Lee, in the initial layouts by Graham Nolan (with finishes by a host of other artists), in the BIT-inked pencils by CAFU (who would then get to work on a more awesome version of this type of material over at Valiant), not to mention in the lettering and in Guy Major’s colors, the priority, apparently, was not to project the strangeness of emergent technology, but to capture its slickness – urgently acknowledging that we are already living in the future, that whatever is coming to destroy us will take a form that has already become recognizable and perhaps even familiar, Blackhawks put the emphasis on dynamism, visually as well as narratively:
Although the central appeal of Blackhawks does lie in its pace and spirit, the reason I haven’t brought up any of the multinational cast members or specific plot points so far isn’t because the series lacked solid characterization or engaging storylines. It’s just that the run was so brief, overall, that those never took the titular great leap forward from clichéd-yet-functional archetypes into something more unique and special.
This is a shame. Mike Costa clearly had plans for a wider saga involving some sort of alien conspiracy within the DC Universe (I can just picture the inevitable crossover with the various cyborgs and robots, not unlike the recent ‘Elementary’ arc of World’s Finest). At least he got to wrap up the first couple of tales and to end on a hopeful note – and, who knows, perhaps the renewed topicality will mean someone will soon pick up where this comic left off. Still, given the speed of change in the last few years, I’m curious about how Blackhawks would have evolved if DC had allowed Costa to fulfill his ambitions and to tackle the full potential of such a promising setup.
I’m setting aside splash pages, for a bit. Instead, in February, these weekly reminders that comics can be awesome will be excerpts of sequences that have stuck in my mind.
Over the past years one of my ‘guilty’ pleasures has been W0rldtr33, a hysterically trashy horror series that, at one point, actually contained the line: ‘she’s been possessed by a malevolent force from the evil internet that lives beneath the internet.’ The comic has a logic-be-damned, quasi-punk satirical approach to horror, with a near-apocalyptic pitch and an in-yer-face attitude that feel well-suited to our near-apocalyptic and in-yer-face times – indeed, it’s not entirely unlike Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. And yet, in the midst of all the gore, of the very silly sci-fi (where a world without internet seems unimaginably dystopic, even though it wasn’t all that long ago…), and of what I assume is some kind of allegory for the far-right radicalization of youth via social media, we got this sweet sequence of pre-arson bonding:
