“I can think for myself, I’ve got something no pill could ever kill”
J. Michael Straczynski has always been a decent writer, but not necessarily a great one, and he’s back with what appears to be a fairly long-running series (I don’t know how much he’s planning to go with this, but it seems fairly lengthy), Synthetics, which Dark Horse seems to be releasing in volume form, presumably with a new #1 issue every time, because higher issue numbers don’t sell and we always need new #1s! 
Tony Parker draws this, Carrie Strachan colors it, and Steve Dutro letters it. Each issue is 20 pages long, meaning the trade will be 80 pages, and each issue is $4.99, so they will cost you $19.96 total, and presumably that’s what Dark Horse will sell the trade for, but I cannot confirm this! And look, there’s Mike Richardson listed as the publisher. It was a simpler time!
This is a story set 50 years in the future (well, by now it’s 48 years in the future, but that’s fine), and humanity has finally killed enough of the planet that the long clock clicking down to our extinction has become a short clock, with no more than two decades left until Earth can no longer support any life. We get a sinister businessman who, we learn later, is a gangster, teaming up with a scientist to create a new form of humans (which is illegal) so that they can save the world. Sounds good! Of course, this is all illegal, and there are cops on the trail — Nick, our protagonist, and his partner, Denise, get on the case, and they eventually end up at the lab where the humans are being grown. Oh dear. There’s also a persistent reporter who uses her audience to spread chaos, because why not? JMS doesn’t waste much time, as this does lead to a big climax of the volume that resets the board of the world.
JMS is, as I pointed out, a decent writer, and this is a pretty good sci-fi noir story. In noir, the world is bad and terrible, and JMS expands this, as the world is actually about to go extinct — can’t get much worse than that! 
If I never see another broken-down cop with some kind of addiction, it will be far too soon, but with Nick, we get a broken-down cop with some kind of addiction. Sigh. Straczysnki, however, is always pretty good at characterization on the fly, so he does a good job making Nick a somewhat sympathetic character. His gangster is an interesting character, too, because he’s somewhat of a stereotypical gangster, but he also has a good reason for doing what he’s doing, and it’s not completely mercenary. His reporter, Blake Wohl, is trying to get information out to people who ought to know it and is standing up to the government and big business to do so, but she’s not a nice person at all and is far more mercenary than any other character in the book. She also uses robotic bees as cameras (there’s one up there on a cover!), which is a pretty cool visual. JMS also does a good job creating the society in which this comic takes place. There are sections of society who react to the imminent extinction of humanity in different and extreme ways, and we get a good sense of that. There are still a lot of clichés of both science fiction and noir, but overall, JMS does a good job with the story.
One of the big reasons I got the book, though, is because Parker draws it, and I very much dig Parker’s art and think he’s a hell of a nice guy, too, so I tend to buy things he draws in order to support him. 
He has such an interesting style — it looks slick, because he uses a thin line and unlike some artists, he’s very meticulous about details (this is neither good nor bad; some artists’ work looks better the sketchier they are, some looks better the more detailed they are), but he also does some rougher work on the margins that always adds depth and nuance to his work. He’s comfortable doing these high-tech environments because his work is so precise and clean, so the tech he draws in his comics always looks very realistic but also slightly sinister, while his ability to scuff parts of the work make it seedier than it might in someone else’s hands, and it lends the comics a slightly broken-down feel, which works in a comic like this. It’s hard to describe, because his work is so crisp in general, but it doesn’t repel you like someone else’s slick work might, because Parker knows how to temper that with roughness. If that makes sense. His crisp line has always worked well on clothing, too, and when it’s important in this story (like the clothing Blake wears, or the clothing Nick’s sister wears), he’s able to bring a nice sense of design and artificiality — in a good way, mind you — to the clothing. Part of this story is about hiding in plain sight, and Parker’s line work helps with that. In the nicest way possible, there’s always a vague creepiness to Parker’s work, and he unleashes it in interesting places and times.
Despite Straczynski giving us probably the worst addition to the Spider-Man canon … ever? he’s still a pretty good writer, and this is an intriguing beginning. I’m in for a while … I just hope they don’t take too long between “volumes.” We need more content!!!!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
