Life Is But A Meme, Sweetheart
Written By: Rob Williams
Art By: Mike Dowling, Quinton Winter,
Clem Robins
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: November 4, 2015
*Non-Spoilers and Score At The
Bottom*
Explain
It!
I love
when a story opens at a warm, exotic locale, sometimes I like to sit and
luxuriate in a particularly nice panel before moving on with the tale. We open
at Visitors Bliss Cay, a privately-owned island in the Bahamas, where Chirper
employee Rees is being hunted down by some guy in a suit and a tribal mask that
looks like a laughing lion with a long, red beard. “What’s Chirper,” you ask?
Why, it’s only the brainchild of multi-billionaire Larry Ferrell, whose
optimistic thoughts about humanity are overlaid on these scenes of attempted
murder in the form of one-hundred and forty character-long missives typed into
his computer application and broadcast to the world via Chirper. See? What a
brilliant idea! I wonder if anyone has thought about that in this reality? The guy in the mask, who
we know as Rubenstein, eventually corners Rees at the edge of a cliff, where
Rees babbles some stuff about a list and being needed to control the one-forty,
blah blah blah. Then he tosses himself off the cliff and dies, which looks like
it sort of bums Rubenstein out. He did have a gun cocked and ready, after all.
Meanwhile,
in St. Louis, Missouri, brother and sister duo David and Devon and three thugs
from their neighborhood are breaking into the electronics store where Devon
works to, well, steal electronics. Once inside, they prepare to start hauling
doohickeys and whatchamacallits when all of the devices in the store go on at
once and begin calling out to David. Everyone flees the store but David, who
sees a leopard walk up to the storefront window and tells him that he will have
to kill soon. Which, by the way, is one of the top five things that could
happen that would cause me to check myself into the nearest insane asylum. Back
in the Bahamas, we find Rubenstein is pals with Larry Ferrell, who looks like
he’s dying or at least is pretty anemic and enjoys lying in bed with tubes in
his face. They make some cryptic comments that seem to amount to a mutual wink
and a nod, and then we’re back to the action!
Seventy-five
thousand feet above Manhattan, New York City, trust funded brat Courtney (or
“@CourtneyOMG” as she is known on Chirper) is preparing for a charity sky dive
with four other unimportant people by popping some pills. They all leap out,
but when Courtney is supposed to pop her parachute she soars into the canyon of
skyscrapers and almost slams into a building before making her death-defying
landing. Before cameras, she tells the world that she’s giving her entire trust
fund to a family whose son has cerebral palsy, just to cheese off her dad. Kids
can be so ungrateful. What will she do with her birthday present, feed the
homeless? Just when Courtney thinks she is free of her burdensome wealth, she
learns that she is rich again, due to an amazing program devised by Larry
Ferrell that I am calling “The Reverse-It’s
A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Gambit.”
See, all
around the world, one-hundred and forty randomly selected people will find new
apps appearing on their phones that read “140.” These people have won a portion
of Ferrell’s seventeen billion dollar fortune, which amounts to one-hundred and
twenty million dollars each. This entire plot is laid out in two panels, look
just check ‘em out below!
This is a
good and bad thing; good because it keeps the infodump concise and does boring
math for us, but bad because it makes one wonder if there’s any substance to
this contrivance. Anyway, after this revelation, we shoot around the globe
checking in on people that have been blessed with the new app that doesn’t even
have in-app purchases: a Persian journalist tasked with covering atrocities
against women who is just about to commit suicide, the kid David who thought he
saw and heard a leopard command him to kill, and a bearded old dude in a ponytail praying
before a wall full of various guns and promising to do the work of the Lord.
What could possibly go wrong?
This is a
really interesting story, I think I learned just exactly enough to keep me
interested for another issue—any less, and I’d probably drift away. Despite my
silly preamble about today’s tech-obsessed culture, this comic book isn’t
really about that, at least not totally. It’s more about the aggrandizing of
wealth by tech companies and the weird personalities that might control that
wealth. There’s obviously some grander scheme being employed here, but even at
face value this one issue is pretty thought provoking and intriguing. The art
is very nice and has a textured feel to it. I’m sure people have made
comparisons to Frank Quitely and I suppose some do apply, but Rowley’s art is much
more fluid and less bulbous and just looks good from panel to panel. The coloring
is very detailed and seems like (and may be) watercolors. If you were looking
for a treatise against Twitter and social media, you won’t find it in this
issue. Instead, you will find a pretty compelling mystery that begs for more
information. So I’ll see you next month, hopefully with some more information!
Bits and
Pieces:
If you
jumped from my preamble to this part, then I must confess that this comic book
has nothing to do with condemning or exalting social media. It’s more of an
unfolding conspiracy that is very relevant to current events, particularly in
the tech- and app-based worlds. The characterization is good, the art is great,
it’s worth checking out if you like a little intrigue with your floppy books.
8/10
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