The Private Eye #1 – Going Meta with Comics

I’m excited about comics at this minute, so bear with me as I gush and gush.
Brian K. Vaughn (of Y: The Last man, Ex Machina, Runaways and Saga) and Marcos Martin (Spider-man and Daredevil) have teamed-up for a completely digital DRM-free, pay-what-you-want creator-owned comic. It’s a dystopia about a world post-internet with everyone caring about their privacy to absurd levels. It’s got a detective in it who looks and moves like a modern Assassin’s Creed protagonist but with a cooler hoodie. And, damn, The comic is really good too.

It’s 32 pages done in a completely non-traditional way with panels don’t accepting any of their usual places as they stretch all over the two-page space. The art is dynamic as Marcos Martin can make this happen seemingly effortless – the characters move with a grace that’s rarely captured in static images. And everybody wears masks as if it was Halloween or if they were superheroes. But they aren’t, they just don’t want you to know who they are, because social media ruined privacy for everyone.

The Private Eye feels like a statement. Like an old man saying the young people that they will be old too, and their electronic thingamajigs will eat them and spit them out as the history will be repeating itself. And yet it doesn’t feel sappy at all, because Martin puts into a form that’s far from normal or typical. His coloring is bright and varied and his style that looks simple doesn’t stray from hiding details all over the place. There’s a racing young heart at the core of the comic, and it spits new ideas every other page.

Yeah, I’m babbling. It’s 2076 and everyone wears masks in a non-superhero way. It’s a first issue out of planned ten. It’s as cheap as you want it to be and as visually fresh as it gets. Here’s ‘it.’

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