By Svetlana Fedotov
Empty Zone is written a little like everything you ever read while reading like something you’ve never really read before. It’s a mish mash of a million subjects that have been played to death, but what they did with that pile of ideas worked out pretty decently. A sci-fi, dystopian, horror, riot-grrl-robotics-expert of a tale, Empty Zone shows that just because a world is over-run with technology, it doesn’t mean that the human spirit has completely disappeared. In fact, it might just be the last frontier. With stunning art and smooth dialogue, it leaves the reader on a hell of a cliffhanger, but still leaves more questions than answers.
The comic follows our protagonist Corinne White, a haunted young woman with a killer body and punk-rock haircut, as we take a peek into her everyday life of drinking, squinting in the sun, and taking mysterious jobs. In the not-so-distant future that she resides in, entire cities have become wired and even human beings have gotten cybernetic enhancements, which, luckily for her, work in her ability to steal information via the human wirings. Unbeknownst to her, she’s not the only one looking to tap into the human energy, as others go about doing her job in less comforting ways. As she goes about keeping her ghosts at bay these shadowy men are determined to let the ghosts out.
So, the first issue is basically all set up of the world and explains who Corinne White is and what she does. While it has a hell of an ending, there isn’t much of an initial story and instead focuses on character development. Essentially, it’s a great start to a graphic novel, but as a standalone issue, nothing really happens in it. Speaking of character development, White turns into a bit of an unoriginal character, full of tropes and sadness and swigging booze and shit, but the way the creator presented her keeps me sort-of into it. Jason Shawn Alexander, the man behind both the art and story, creates actual ghosts to haunt her dreams and though he spends way too long having her bang the spirit of her dead lover, it solid pathway to creating sympathy to her. This comic pretty much reads as an homage to Blade Runner with ghosts. But the ghosts are fucking cool.
The place where Alexander really shines is in the art. Bold with heavy inks and scraggly people, it’s the perfect companion to a tale of depression and personal growth in the future. The colorist LuisNCT captures the essence of the Alexander’s pencils beautifully, overflowing the pages with hushed greys, power reds, and the fuzzy inking of dirty snow on the ground. It’s easy to get sucked into the work by art alone, but it’s a shame that the story struggles to say afloat. As stated in the intro paragraph, it’s decent. Perhaps it’s one too many subjects, where instead of picking one or two ideas to focus on, the giant rigmarole of possibilities forced Alexander to only work with surface instead of really diving in. But, I mean, for real, those ghosts are pretty cool.