When Duncan Jones, the director of two sci-fi movies set in the same universe (2009’s Moon and 2018’s Mute) realized the conclusion to his “Mooniverse Trilogy” was just too epic in scale to obtain a budget to film it to his satisfaction, he turned to comics. Well, first he turned to the internet. On a lark, he asked his Twitter followers to name some artists that he should work with. After an exuberant response, as well as recruiting a co-writer in comics veteran Alex de Campi (fresh off of last year’s incredible “Dracula, Motherf**ker”), Jones’ next move was to fund the book through Kickstarter. Three hundred and sixty thousand dollars raised and only eighteen months later, the graphic novel “MADI: Once Upon A Time in the Future” (Z2 Comics) now sits on comics stands and in the hands of backers. The gorgeous tome contains a murderer’s row of talented comic artists, each taking a small section of the story, and each section playing to the strengths of the artist. “MADI” is a fascinating, and exciting, globe-spanning road trip story, but also an interesting experiment in how comics can be made.
Written by Duncan Jones and Alex de CampiHardcover Art by Yoko Shimizu
Illustrated by Dylan Teague, Glenn Fabry, Duncan Fegredo, LRNZ, Ed Ocaña, André Araújo, Simon Bisley, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Tonci Zonjic, Pia Guerra, James Stokoe, RM Guéra, Chris Weston, Rufus Dayglo, Annie Wu, David Lopez and Christian Ward
MADI is a 260-page road trip graphic novel set in the near future, by film director Duncan Jones (MOON, SOURCE CODE) and writer Alex de Campi (BAD KARMA, BLADE RUNNER), and drawn by some of comics’ most exciting artists including Glenn Fabry, Simon Bisley, Duncan Fegredo and Pia Guerra. Each artist tackles a 8-30 page section of the story, bringing to life one location.MADI is the third and final story in the “Mooniverse,” an anthology of independent stories that take place in a shared future.
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and up to her eyeballs in debt. She and the rest of her team have retired from the military but are now trapped having to pay to service and maintain the technology put into them during their years of service. They’re working for British conglomerate Liberty Inc as mercenaries, selling their unique ability to be remote controlled by specialists while in the field, and the debts are only growing as they get injured completing missions. We meet Madi as she decides she’s had enough. She will take an off-the-books job that should earn her enough to pay out her and her sister, but when the piece of tech she’s supposed to steal turns out to be a kid, and she suddenly blacks out… she finds herself on the run from everyone she’s ever known.
In a globe-spanning adventure from Shanghai to Soho, Madi has to stay one step ahead of the giant corporations closing in on her from all sides.
The comics industry is no stranger, especially in recent years, to many books having the look, and feel, of a spec script for a potential film or movie series. A cynical comic fan might even see Jones moving “MADI” from movie to comic as more of the same, with all the cache awarded a successful film director allowing him to poach A-list comic talent to storyboard a vanity project. I, however, side with the storytellers. If you have a story you believe in, you don’t much care what form that story exists in- you just want to birth it, to gift it to the world. Being Duncan Jones just makes the prospect of that a bit easier. What seems evident in every “Mooniverse” project is that Jones is wholly invested in exploring this world and sharing his version of the future. Not unlike hard sci-fi godfathers William Gibson and Philip K. Dick, this future looks hard at the intersection of humanity and technology, and the interesting thought experiments and moral playgrounds where the two dovetail.
While both of the first two chapters in the “Mooniverse” operate on a smaller, more intimate scale, “MADI” is anything but. The corporations that run the world in this near-future play pivotal roles in this third chapter, and their reach is not only global, but to those running around with corporate made implants, and traveling via privatized public transportation, and living in modular corporate/employer-owned housing containers, their reach might seem universal. Playful corporate mascots are appropriated and have become instruments of privatized sanctioned violence, corporate security forces have most militaries outgunned and overmatched, and world governments seem unequipped to step in. Jones’ (and de Campi’s) vision of the future is that of a global Capitalist state- an end game where we are born indebted to corporate overlords, and most of us stay that way.
Continued belowAt the center of the story is our titular Madi, a soldier-turned-mercenary, whose particular set of talents (and augmentations) allow her to be controlled remotely by a “tele-ops” team, not unlike a marionette. This is especially useful for getting specialized operatives behind enemy lines, without actually having to get them behind those lines. Deep in debt trying to keep her augmentations in working order, Madi covers up the “One Last Job” section on her Story Trope Bingo Card to pull herself from that debt and her dangerous lifestyle. Things naturally go awry when that last job uncovers a dangerous new iteration of the “tele-ops” technology and involves the kidnapping of a young boy with special abilities of his own. On the run with the boy and his doctor in tow, Madi is forced to combat both current and former employers on a road trip across the United States and dodge them long enough to uncover a way out from under their thumbs.
The story that unfolds over the course of the 260-page graphic novel is anything but new- the plot being somewhat thin, and mostly the structure by which Jones and de Campi utilize to explore this future world. This is not to say the characters aren’t engaging- de Campi’s script brings these trope-y characters to fully realized life. Truly, though, the setting is the main character, the world in which these characters have to navigate, and wade against. While the story rushes headlong into a formulaic third act, this is not to say readers won’t be engaged. The pressures of this corporate-indentured future feel prescient, and Madi becomes easier and easier to root for when we understand what’s at stake, even if those stakes are mostly personal.
Speaking of personal, each of the eighteen(!) artists on this book bring their singular styles to this book and do so with aplomb. De Campi’s idea to break the book into chunks for multiple artists to tackle to decrease the production window also gives readers an absolute feast for the eyeballs. From industry hall-of-famers like Glenn Fabry and Duncan Fegredo to relative newcomers like Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, the pages spring to life under the direction of these dynamite artists. Further, each artist seems a perfect fit for the scenes they were chosen for: Pia Guerra deftly illustrates a quiet car ride meant to connect the three main characters over conversation, bringing them closer; Tonci Zonjic does brilliant work with a claustrophobic fight scene in a cramped apartment; and James Stokoe does Hunter S. Thompson proud with his own nightmarish version of a gaudy, gambling oasis at the Grand Canyon. There truly isn’t a weak artist in the bunch – and if you get the chance, track down the oversized hardcover to be able to more fully appreciate the outstanding work on display.
I can’t help but think of Jones’ completion of his trilogy with this volume as an absolute success. While Moon is a contemporary sci-fi classic, the middle chapter Mute was, though beautiful to look at, muddy and underwhelming. With “MADI” we are treated with a large-scale pulse-pounding ride, an action epic that broadens the scope of the world Jones introduced to us over a decade ago. I have a few technical complaints, however, most notably that the credits page in my hardcover volume doesn’t indicate who the colorists and letterer(s) are (though colorists can be determined if you know them by name already), and Yoko Shimizu’s rather iconic wraparound cover isn’t credited at all. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Jones in the comics world – there’s still a few dozen dynamite 2000AD artists he’s yet to work with! – and I’m hopeful that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the “Mooniverse.” I think the world he’s created is ripe with stories that will continue to challenge how we navigate our love affair with technology and the ever-increasing reach of corporations. Jones still has much to say on that score, I think, and I hope he knows he’s always welcome to do so in comics.
