Two of my favorite series had new issues released today, and one of them just had a new issue last week too! (I’m so spoiled, I’m going to start expecting this kind of content every week, I want all the beautiful artwork ALL OF IT.) First up, keep reading for a review of Far Sector #10.
Small spoilers below for this issue. Great big spoilers for previous issues.
I’d been worried that with Future State going on at DC, Far Sector might get altered to fit the event in some way? Luckily, that didn’t happen, because the story is beautifully complex already and doesn’t need any added wrinkles.
So, the Switchoff drug has been part of the story since issue one, and I knew it was illegal because it allows people to have emotions again, which the ruling party doesn’t want. At first I thought the ruling party just liked people to be placid because unemotional people don’t rock boats, and I was sort of right, but it’s more than that.
Then I assumed that they wanted Switchoff to stay illegal because someone in power was making money off the sale of it (illegal drugs being more pricey than legal ones,) but it was more complicated than that.
Last issue we found out that the @At, the cybernetic race in the City Enduring, is starving, because they live off of new ideas (specifically memes, which are basically ideas with emotions attached.) You can’t make a meme if you don’t have emotions, so the @At are slaves, doing any job they can just to survive. (In the first few issues I thought Jo’s friend CanHaz thought cat memes from Earth were fun, but they were actually more money than she’d usually see after years of work.)
But there’s an underground meme market, run on fresh, newly-created memes, and they’re made by people using, you guessed it, Switchoff. With their emotions back on they can create this new content, which the @At will pay dearly for. And last issue Jo found an illegal sweatshop for meme-making. It’d be bad enough if it was just people being paid almost no money to make something so valuable. But in the opening pages of this issue, Jo sees that these people are being held against their will and injected with Switchoff whether they want it or not.
Jo grew up knowing that racial inequality and subjugation on Earth isn’t accidental, it’s planned. So what does she do when she finds it here? She loses her shit, obviously.
An all out brawl at the sweatshop is just the intro to this issue, though. We also find out who knew all this was happening, who’s powerless to stop it, who’s got the power to stop it but chooses not to, who started it, who tried to finish it, and who’s really in charge. Which sounds like a huge info dump, but everything we’ve learned in this story has happened so organically, it only sounds like a lot when you try to cram it into one review. I never felt overwhelmed by information, it was always just one reveal flowing into the next one.
It helps that that art’s so gorgeous, of course. Jo’s friend Syz looked particularly nice this issue, both the expressiveness of her face and the design of her hair and clothes. And the colors are as delicious as always, opening with the glowing red of the sweatshop and transitioning into the shadowy blues of the interrogation room, with the occasional jewel green of Jo’s Lantern power.
And I love how Jamal Campbell draws the intro pages to these issues. A while ago we got the introduction delivered as an overblown romance movie. This issue (because of Jo’s line “they might just be coming to get me” we have a fantastic homage to Night of the Living Dead. And I just realized, duh, doing it that way makes it a meme! I swear, this series is so pretty and clever I can’t stand it.
