Ben Templesmith - Singularity 7

So how about some American comics? If you look around you'll notice that there's pretty much the same amount of prejudice about American comics that there is for the Japanese manga. Both sides have its terrible commercialized and fanserviced stories, sagas, settings and characters. But underneath (or among) the shitty ones you can always find some good stuff. So why not share them?

Since this is the first in line of "western" comics that I'll post I don't really see any other option but to post cyberpunk. Because cyberpunk is awesome.

Singularity 7 is a short story written and drawn by Ben Templesmith. If you like to read comics that are based on video games you might have come across some of his work that he did for Deadspace or Silent Hill and he also likes do to horror comics. From what I've gathered this is his only cyberpunk comic.

The plot is set in a destroyed (of course it's destroyed) post apocalyptic world. An old man narrates to us why and how did this all came to be. A comet fell from the sky carrying some kind of living mechanized beings that merged with a nearby human. He decided to do good like cleaning up the atmosphere and stuff like that. Obviously greed and some other things came along and shit hit the fan. Now all that's left are small pockets of humanity that try to fight back destroy the singularity of the man and nanomachines.

The story follows several characters but due to the killing nature of the surroundings they don't really live very long so we don't get the chance to know more about certain individuals that are present in the story. That's perhaps the biggest flaw of this comics; it's too short. There are some interesting ideas and settings here but it all seems so shortened. It's a pity because I really enjoyed the story and I would love to see this world a explored a lot more thoroughly. As I've mentioned before this is a very mean world and thus the characters aren't really any angels here, they are just trying to survive here so luckily you won't find any of the Hollywood morality system here. It's bleak and nihilist, just what cyberpunk should be!

The art actually reminds me a lot of Blame! in a weird way. It's not really that detailed but it gives the same feeling of atmosphere and the portrayal unnatural yet natural beings is similar in comparison. The lines/architecture and drawings, unlike in Blame! (aside from the characters), are much more curvy and they look a lot more "hand drawn". It's all very simplistic but it delivers the desired effect and that's what matters really. As usual with western comics all pages are fully colored so it's a nice visual candy from start to finish. Ben seems to have a really nice talent for drawing semi fucked up things.

Overall it's a nice short story. It's nothing grand but it's a fun one night read.

See comments.

Tsutomu Nihei - Blame!

Recently I've reread this and I realized that I never shared this here. Blame! is probably the most famous cyberpunk manga among the internet community (my fair estimation) so this is for those few of you who haven't read it yet.
Blame! is set in the distant future where humanity is extinct (or so is believed) and all that's left are their creations that stroll through the massive mega-structure. The story follows a character called Killy who is, at the beginning, on a mission to reach the top level.

The story itself and the plot contains much more "showing" than "telling", there aren't much words in here which is a plus and minus at the same time. The good thing about it is that it immerses you in this bleak and desolate world because there's not really much to talk about when you're alone in the middle of nothing. On the bad side it makes the plot harder to follow. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what the hell is going on because when the characters do speak they say something completely different from what you thought was happening. Although this happens sometimes you can still catch up with the story as it goes on.

The high point of this book is its world. There's nothing quite like it and I found it more and more interesting as the story progressed on. Although the whole story is set in a huge megastructure there is a lot of diversity in various levels that we see throughout the tale. Each level seems to contain its own genetically deformed humanoids and creatures of all kinds. The completely bleak art style gives a great representation of how massive and broken down this whole thing is. Apparently Nihei finished the school for architects so he knows how buildings work and his knowledge really shines here. The only thing that bothered me sometimes here is that sometimes the shading is so dark that you can't really tell what's going on but that could be due to bad scanning (some volumes aren't really scanned top notch).

The atmosphere, the plot and the interesting characters make this one of the best manga made that I've read and it would be a shame if you skip this.

Part 1, 2 and 3.