Finally A Post-Apocalyptic World For Me

And I don't mean because they have robot gorillas controlled by artificial intelligence.

Volume 1 of Analog contains the first 5 issues of Gerry Duggan and David O'Sullivan's 'cyber-dystopian noir'. I feel like they needed to fit the prefix "neo-" in there somewhere, but oh well. The idea is the Internet has somehow been tampered with so that there's no longer any secrets online. And in the four years since then, no one has figured out a way around that, so if you need things sent secretly, you hire a "Ledger Man", such as Jack McGinnis there.

I don't know why you don't just call them "couriers", but whatever. Jack actually had something to do with the downfall of the Internet, after being approached by some Zuckerberg stand-in named "Oppenheimer", blowing a lot of smoke about needing analysts to pore over all the information online to avert future tragedies (after allowing a foreign power to pay him to tamper in the last election).

As it turns out, that guy is still a problem for Jack, and not the only one. The U.S. government managed to get its shit together (in only 4 years? impossible) and has adapted to the new way of moving information. They'll have Jack and every other Ledger Man's cooperation, or else. Jack also has a black irish anarchist girlfriend who makes her own trouble without needing splash damage from Jack's, and what's left of at least one A.I. that's very curious about people. So there's a lot set up to play out one way or the other.

Jack is sort of glib, the kind of contrary type who doesn't appreciate being pushed around or told to conform, and will therefore cause trouble even as it keeps getting him beat up and thrown in vans. By the time he was being thrown in a van in Tokyo on his way to being thrown out of Japan, I couldn't keep track of which group was giving him the boot. I'm kind of predisposed not to like him, since he's one of those New Yorker asswipes that calls the rest of the U.S. flyover country and thinks the sun rises and sets on their craphole city.

Duggan aims for a lot of dry, unaffected wit from most characters. Two cops find the last surviving member of a gang of white supremacists than Oona (the anarchist lady) killed single-handed the night before hanging from a bedsheet in his hospital room, and their immediate discussion is whether this means more or less paperwork. (Answer: 'More short-term, less long.') Jack's dad tells him not to shoot the last guy that attacked his house because he's right next to the sauce he's making for his meatballs. The mileage varies on that stuff.

O'Sullivan gives most everyone a weary, aged look. It's been hard lives for most of them, and they take their toll. Jack usually has stubble and deep lines running along his jaw and cheeks. I guess that explains the jaded reactions to all the violence, though. The art reminds me a little of Shawn Crystal's, but the people don't look as feral, or have as exaggerated proportions.