THE SURROGATES
COMIC BOOK REVIEW

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
FIGHT CENSORSHIP SUPPORT CBLDF SURROGATES MOVIE REVIEW THE SURROGATES - 2006 - 2009 Writer: Robert Venditti Artist: Brett Weldele Top Shelf Productions ISBN: 978-1-891830-87-7

Deep in the downtown future Atlanta, Georgia, at night and in the rain, a couple are walking past Hogan's Tavern, oblivious to the weather.

It's a heterosexual couple. The young, athletic man wants to duck into an alley. The young and vivacious woman isn't sure that's a good idea.

She knows what he wants to do in the alley.

The man tells her its not like she can catch a cold or something.

The woman wonders aloud if someone might see them and the man says, "We work hard for these bodies. Let's show them off."

Naturally they are interrupted by an intruder. This third party is weaponless, but he grabs both of them by the wrist and, as they struggle he tells them,

"Live."

Then he electrocutes them with a charge so strong it knocks out the street lights as well.

There is a witness but the intruder doesn't seem to care.

Perhaps the intruder wants people to know and talk.

The murder took place in an area of Atlanta called The Backbone and its here, in the day, that Detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford of the Metro Department are ID'ing the bodies.

The female body belongs to a man named Henry A. Jackowski. The male body belongs to a man named Edward T. Clegg. Both of the bodies are manufactured robots. They're surrogates for real living people.

In the year 2054, particularly in the big cities, and specifically in this city, nearly everyone owns or makes payments on their own Surrogates. They've largely replaced personal automobiles.

Because Surrogates can withstand greater impacts and other harm than humans, the police also need robots to do their job, their living brains in their living bodies wirelessly networked to their city supplied Surrogate.

Via your Surrogate you can enjoy smoking, because the harmful part never enters your lungs and sensors stimulate your mind into experiencing what you want to feel. That same brain stimulation gives you a sense of being drunk, high, even orgasms.

It's impossible for you to catch any contagion from whatever your Surrogate does.

A Masochist can indulge themselves in tortures far beyond the pain and mortality thresholds of an actual human body.

Speaking of bodies, you can live as the opposite sex in your Surrogate robot body without having to irreversibly butcher your living one.

However, like a car, not everyone can afford their own Surrogate. Real actual people must still move among the Surrogate robots: avatars controlled by humans who, like their early Internet counterparts, are learning how to anonymously live without the consequence of their actions, and like their early millennium web surfers and social media trolls, are becoming inhumanly curious to see how far that goes.

Two "dead" Surrogates: It's easy enough to find the owners as all are licensed and easily scanned. As Detectives Greer and Ford go to question the victim/witnesses, they're not surprised when they see that Edward T. Clegg looks nothing like his Surrogate. He's middle aged, bald, and obese.

He's also distraught. Through his Surrogate he works in high paying dangerous construction job, the only kind of construction work that still exists in a world where "Surries" can do it better than any human with no risk to life. No way Edward T. can do that with his real body. He just bought the new, top-of-the-line Surrogate, used his old Surrogate as a down-payment, and planned to insure it with the next paycheck. Without insurance to buy a new one, and with his new Surrogate destroyed, he can't work to pay it off. Nobody who works in manual labor can compete against a Surrogate. Clegg is staring down the long barrel of homelessness.

Edward also mentions there was a third person there, but since there is no third "body" Greer and Ford are uninterested. Basically they're just going through the routine of paperwork clean-up for whenever and whatever insurance companies may inquire.

Greer and Ford are nearly slovenly in their by-the-book, check-the-boxes investigation. Two people out in the rain were struck by lightning in a wet alleyway with metal everywhere: like one big wet conductor.

What gets Greer's interest is the report from forensics. It's rare enough that lightning in the city would make it past all the metal communication towers and skyscrapers to directly reach the ground. Its extraordinarily unlikely for lightning to do that, then enter through the wrists of both "Surries", and completely fry them, leaving nothing salvageable.

"Like getting bit by a shark while holding the winning lotto ticket."

Harvey Greer, who is bored with his job and his life, just found a tiny spark in this case that lights his interest. If this fry job wasn't a result of nature, what happened?

Nature abhors a vaccuum and Detectives abhor a mystery.

Harvey returns home to see his real live self sleeping on a Surrie Chair and plugged in. His Surrogate steps into its charging niche and human Harvey wakes up and unplugs.

Like Clegg, real Greer is balding, older, and obese compared to his robot: A common symptom of long-term sedentary Surrogate use.

Unlike Clegg, real Greer is married, but his wife Margaret hasn't touched the real him in "awhile", only Surrogate to Surrogate. In fact, she long ago insisted on separate bedrooms as she doesn't want to be seen as she really is.

Spurning his desire to be real with each other, Margaret leaves and Harvey watches the disk that Clegg recorded from his Surrie for the porn he hoped to have from the night before.

It wasn't lightning that struck Clegg and Jackowski's Surrogates. Harvey sees what really happened.

It's at this point that THE SURROGATES takes off as Greer, who prefers a boring job because that means no one is getting hurt, and Ford, who wants to catch criminals and save lives, both get more than they bargained for.

Naturally more Surrogates pile up but so does the complexity of the case. Ford suspects that the fried Surrogates were a test run for something much bigger and he may be right. The next two dead "Surries" are security people at a high tech company. Some tech was stolen and the corporate victims are being coy about what it is.

Meanwhile, a man known as The Prophet speaks to a mass of people. He apparently is a real human and so are his followers and all want to see the destruction of the Surrogate culture that turns people into inconsiderate, uncaring humans.

Robert Venditti's story is captivating. This is more than just another dystopian SciFi Thriller future. Hope and hopelessness compete through every page. I couldn't figure out the end and, I didn't just want Greer and Ford to solve the crime, I found myself wanting them to fix, or at least be a part of the solution to this grim future.

The deeper I got into the story the more I appreciated Brett Weldele's gritty art. As the characters talk about the trade-offs over what Surrogates can and can't do, it felt like his style also represented a Surrie's limit in how it lets humans see, feel, and interact with the world: The big but common things that people are willing to lose to gain a small novelty.

The media calls the Intruder, known as Steeplejack, a Techno-Terrorist: Except he doesn't kill people. On the contrary he implores them to "Live", something that people are doing less of as their Surrogate bodies make them feel young and healthy - right up to the moment their improperly fed and atrophying real bodies are dying at younger and younger ages.

As the case becomes more convoluted, even people who are only witnesses or experts are reluctant to say what they know through no external threat but their own persoal comfort. No oversized and seemingly undefeatable Corporation or Government is doing this to us. We choose to do this to ourselves and even the people who make these Surries for us, are hooked as well.

The culture of living through a Surrogate gives people more than privacy, but the kind of anonimity they've grown used to. It's a humanity that hides behind their mobile facades.

In addition to the all of the original issues collected into graphic novel form, you also get extras between each issue that reveals the depth of this future world, and it's not a bad backstory at all. Moreover its all set up like a pitch deck for turning THE SURROGATES into a movie.

Speaking of which -

If you've seen the 2009 SURROGATES movie starring Bruce Willis, you haven't experienced the best of the original. THE SURROGATES graphic novel is a stormy ocean, whereas the amatuer hour movie is a diluted, foot-sized mud puddle, and made about as much of a splash.

In addition to being a SciFi Thriller, you may have noticed by now that THE SURROGATES is also a Mystery. Now the problem I often have with most modern mysteries is the reveal at the end featuring a walk-on character so immaterial that the entire story gives the reader nothing to suggest that they could possibly be the centerpiece of it all. They're nearly Deux ex machina.

Detective: "Wait! Weren't you at the bus stop, eating a sandwich?"

Villain: "Yes, but I'm also the bastard son of the late Lord Kent, who abandoned my Mother, my sister, and my pet rock!"

Detective: "Then why did you murder the homeless man?"

Villain: "It's my royal bloodline. I detest poor hygiene."

Yeah, none of that PBS Masterpiece Mystery! bullshit is in Venditti and Weldele's tale. The end is all earned, which is why I give THE SURROGATES four Fanboys.

Review copyright 2023 by E.C.McMullen Jr.

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