What if you could see the world exactly how you wanted to see it? This high-concept series from Monkeybrain is a mind-bender and a half, and awfully easy on the eyes.
Written by Tim Daniel & Jeremy Holt
Illustrated by Joshua GowdyIris is the perfect marriage of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, serving as the backbone for enhanced reality contact lenses that provide users with the perfect antidote to reality’s many maladies. From pop-culture inspired fantasies to manifestations of their personal imagining, they see the world precisely as they wish. To ensure societal tranquility, citizens of cView City are fitted with a pair of lenses at birth, but when Aldair–a teenage programming heiress–gets a glimpse of life with her own eyes, the world she once knew irrevocably changes forever.
In cView City, using stylized “skins” to improve the reality you perceive has become a way of life. The technology, called IRIS, has changed everything for the better – or at least, that’s what Mallerie, one of its pioneers, will have us believe. Her daughter Aldair isn’t sold on the concept; and from the get-go we have a protagonist who would appreciate a new perspective on things.
Getting all this information across does require a certain amount of expository dialogue, and the conversations do knot and tangle at a few key moments, with exotic-sounding jargon estranging more than it immerses. More often than not, though, the exposition is handled delicately, with few-to-none “As you know, Bob” moments. This is a story about visual information, and happily, much of the world-building comes across through the changes in skin that punctuate the story.
What keeps us on our toes is how visually appealing all these different worlds are. Joshua Gowdy’s work is pastel-coloured and effortless-looking, selling the many attractions of this future world – as well as its ugliness. Before our eyes, a drab, run-down marketplace is transformed into prosperous-looking town square – and all the while, Gowdy parses out detail in a way that makes all appearances feel over-smooth, deceptive.
IRIS – represented by a green-glowing, female head – isn’t hard to see as a malevolent entity, and she presides over several pages in the comic, looking smug. It’s an effective device, with Gowdy’s portrayal of this entity inspiring just the right amount of unease. By contrast, our human characters, no matter their skins, come across intensely – they’ve got pinched, thoughtful faces that get across cynicism, naivete, and all the shades in between.
Most remarkably of all, Gowdy’s layouts and staging keep things clear, even when there’s an abrupt change of skin or scene. Simple though it is, a sequence where the clicking of old-fashioned boots is replaced by the thud of sandals gets its point across beautifully, changing our milieu and introducing our catalyst, Buoy.
This technologically adept youth shares a similar sense of skepticism with Aldair, and their meet-cute is unconventional, segueing into a cliffhanger ending that seems to come ten pages too early. We don’t have a hold on either of their personalities just yet, but for the moment, understanding that they’ve got something vital in common creates enough suspense to carry us over into the next issue.
Despite a wealth of exposition, “Skinned” goes down like cream soda, introducing a world that’s only a hop, skip and a jump from our own. It’s putting forth a big concept and asking big questions – but most importantly, it’s casting an aesthetic spell, making use of the very process we’re supposed to be questioning. That’s no mean feat, and exactly what we need from a comic about the seductiveness of technology.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – Buy
