Review - The Surrogates by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele
In the first-rate science fiction mystery graphic novel “The Surrogates,” the latest craze for technology-hungry Americans is to have a surrogate — that is, an android body that goes out and lives your life for you while you sit around the house hooked up to it. The world presented by “The Surrogates” is a bleak one — it’s populated by bodies, but not people, a place where interpersonal interaction doesn’t really exist because you don’t actually know who you’re interacting with.
Somewhere in this less-than-idyllic world lurks a killer — of sorts. He doesn’t actually kill anyone, rather he electrocutes and destroys surrogate bodies, leaving the owners stranded without a clue as to how they should function in their real bodies. Detective Harvey Greer is assigned to the case and begins to suspect the culprit behind the crimes is far more than a lone nut. After his own surrogate is destroyed by the criminal, Greer decides to re-enter the world in his own body and discover again what it means to be human, endangering his actual life in order to solve the case.
As with any good mystery, the detective serves as the reader’s guide through an unknown world — the job requires poking around in hidden places, perfect as an opportunity for the reader to be a fly on the wall as the world of the future unfolds with alarming clarity. Greer’s city is one of smarmy business people and religious fanatics, of imperfect people cowering in their apartments while their minds enter roaming bodies and allow them to fool themselves as to their own identity.
Scripter Robert Venditti is able to pull in identity issues of the digital age and use them for a science fiction adventure in the tradition of Phillip K. Dick. As we lurk online behind avatars and screen names, we are already a society of surrogates — how many of us do business with people we have never seen, befriend people we have never stood next to? Venditti uses a certain level of understandable technophobia to craft a cautionary tale in classic science fiction mold.
Aided by artist Brett Weldele, whose style of sketchy and stark inked characters with bold color washes in the in the background create an unfamiliar and disturbing landscape, Venditti has created a scenario that — no surprise — has Hollywood calling. But before Bruce Willis brings adrenaline and explosions to the proceedings, check out the artful graphic novel from which the ideas flow.
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