Ezra Claytan Daniels’s “Upgrade Soul” is a provocative and moving meditation on mortality, vanity, and the dark side of eugenics. Springing out of the creator’s fascination and struggles with what it means to be “better,” the story of Hank and Molly Nonnar unfolds over almost 300 pages of deeply immersive, touchingly tragic, and disturbing storytelling that reward readers for the attention the book demands from page one. Lion Forge has another sublime graphic novel on its hands.
Written and Illustrated by Ezra Claytan DanielsCover by Ezra Claytan DanielsFor their 45th anniversary, Hank and Molly Nonnar decide to undergo an experimental procedure that will give them their youth back, but their hopes are dashed when the couple is faced with the results: severely disfigured yet intellectually and physically superior duplicates of themselves. Can the original Hank and Molly coexist in the same world as their clones? In Upgrade Soul, McDuffie Award-winning creator Ezra Claytan Daniels asks probing questions about what shapes our identity-Is it the capability of our minds or the physicality of our bodies? Is a newer, better version of yourself still you? This page-turning graphic novel follows the lives of Hank and Molly as they thrust into a very David Cronenberg-esque life change.
The solicitation’s reference to Cronenberg is apt, but it should be noted that “Upgrade Soul” is more like Cronenberg by way of Wes Anderson. There is a quirkiness the book’s take on a body horror tale. When the Nonnars sit through their first presentation on the procedure that they will eventually embark upon, it’s in a gymnasium. In fact, the whole facility being used for this black market science project is a retrofitted school, and this creative decision by Daniels reinforces the idea that these scientific proceedings are not ready for prime time while also suggesting something about the study’s participants: perhaps that for all their intellectual gifts may be mired in a kind of school daze superficiality where the seeds of body image take root in everyone’s lives. It’s a genius creative decision by Daniels, but it is one of many that the book delivers.
The decision to have one of the principals behind the Upgrade Cell project only shown via teleconference and by way of a cathode tube television (the story is set in the late-80s, early-90s) is ingenious as well. She takes on an almost Max Headroom quality, as if this is the only way she exists. We do see her briefly in flashback, but Dr. Victoria Teel is a different brand of scientist. She represents the power broker-type who manages to get projects funded without ever really putting her neck out there. She has no skin in the game, and she is content to watch from afar while tipping up her whiskey-filled rocks glass, hoping this is the project that will bring her the biggest notoriety and success but scheming for a safety hatch if it isn’t. Dr. Kenton Kallose is the researcher with more at stake in the project. He’s the expert for whom the clock on being designated the “most promising young mind” is ticking, and it’s his sister’s story that is perhaps the most moving arc in the book.
It’s a testament to Daniels that even the most minor of supporting players are given nice character development here. While the book’s story revolves around Molly and Hank’s series of unfortunate scientific events, it’s in the texture created by this large ensemble cast that gives the story its real resonance, showing how the acts of a few can have a ripple effect into the lives of others that cause not insignificant changes. In fact, it’s how these characters get hurt by the lofty aspirations of others that is a central conceit of the book.
“Upgrade Soul” is beautifully bookended by scenes between Molly and her young niece Del. Del is Hank’s brother’s daughter, and her inclusion in the story at the beginning and end serves to reinforce the childish vanity that Molly and Hank fell prey to when they embarked upon this procedure that leaves them worse than when they started. It’s difficult to come away from a story like “Upgrade Soul” without shaking one’s head at the vainglorious motivations of the principal characters, especially when contrasted against characters like Del and her father Cliff (Hank’s brother) who live in the day-to-day mundanity with which Molly and Hank seemingly have little concern beyond lip service. After turning the final page, the idea that lingers on the palate is not necessarily a new one in fiction but it is one that needs to be told again and again. There’s an old aphorism that states that better is the enemy of good, and nowhere is that saying more proven than in the pages of “Upgrade Soul.”
The presentation of the book is up to the task of translating the big ideas it contains. Daniels’s line work is delicate and assured, and his colors have a pastel and surreal dreaminess that is sometimes interrupted by the high-chroma greens of the unnatural progeny of Hank and Molly. The darkness of the proceedings is somewhat mutated by the quirky renderings into something like the marriage of chocolate and peanut butter. The aesthetic really lifts the book that could have been mired in moody drabness, and the fact that it does not devolve into a macabre chamber piece is a truly amazing narrative balancing act. Tonally, the book never falters or fails to pack a wallop with each twist and turn. The ending feels inevitable and surprising at the same time. The pacing is superb, and reads briskly, belying both the physical and conceptual heft of the book. Even the lettering choices are inspired for crying out loud. Quite simply, it’s a tour de force, the result of a single creator’s single-minded vision to create something that says something about our moment on the evolutionary spectrum while grappling with his own very personal issues of value and worth. Take a bow, Ezra Claytan Daniels. “Upgrade Soul” deserves to cement your legacy as a masterful comic creator, and it appears to have come out of an effort not to be great, but to be honest. Other creators, take note.
