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.