Top Cow Productions/Image Comics 2016
Created & Written by Matt Hawkins
Created & Illustrated by Raffaele Ienco
Lettered by Troy Peteri
This is what I love about Matt and what he writes. Sometimes when you least expect it something powerful and poignant comes along and it’s completely relevant to our world today. While this is classified as science fiction if you look at our current state of the world, and the United States election, you can see how this kind of segregation could happen. People pulling away from one another to be among their own kind to avoid strife, war and conflict. Matt takes it to the next level however and breeds out individuality. Taking away everything that makes a person unique and thanks to the Artificial Intelligence that runs the world well it’s convinced the nation’s this is what’s best for them.
Controlled births and deaths, no more fighting over land, religion or ideas. What are we willing to give up to live in Utopia? What happens when inevitably someone comes along to disrupt that status quo? What started out as this rather interesting look at the price we pay for living peacefully turned into this massively monumental look at the need to accept our differences and embrace what makes us unique.
Each person who reads this will take away their own lessons and I could draw parallels to what I see in the world today but it’s more important for the reader to see them and not be influenced by someone else’s view. Julia’s journey through the nation’s and her meeting of the young folk she met along the way and their realisation of the kind of world they live in well that’s something unique to her. From what I gather this was all for her benefit to explain her unique place in the world and the consequences of her life.
I hadn’t expected this to end the way it did. I had hoped that this group of young people would be leading the world into a new generation where a city could be built that incorporated people from all these different cultures. Perhaps that is still on the table perhaps not. There is however another factor that almost gets overlooked in all this and that’s Sol itself. This A.I. that has the job of ensuring mankind lives in peace and the drastic way it does that. It’s almost the horror story cliche when machines gain too much sentience and rule the world. It’s actions are as much to blame as the people who live in this world.
Raffaele’s interiors continue to be impressive. His eye for storytelling is impressive and his use of page layouts with angles, perspective and backgrounds really bring the reader into this story beautifully. From the sameness of the people to the variations in the robot entities all of it has this quality to it that is highly impressive.
This really is, for me, a chilling look at the most extreme answer to ending the conflict and wars that cover our planet today. It’s incredibly intelligent, well written and an honest look at something that left unchecked could result in what we’re doing to ourselves.
This should be required reading not only for comics fans but for schools. It’s one of the most influential stories to come out in decades that showcase the need for acceptance and diversity in our society.