Who wants to be a cyborg?

[superboyprime]

Mek was a mini-series written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Steve Rolston. It explores the world of body modification fads, with a science-fiction twist.



"Elective cyborging has become an underground subculture in the mode of piercing, branding or tattooing today. The technology used to effect this is called, simply, MEK. Metal fetishism. These aren't your clean-lined cyborgs of videogames and the Six Million Dollar Man. These are weird, spiky, buzzing, sexy, scary, transgressive people. Like any youth culture in its early iteration, it's kind of unsettling...

It began in LA. And deep in the Mek area of LA, RJ COIN, one of the original Mek developers, is shot to death..."









Many years later:

Sarissa returns to Sky Road after ex-boyfriend RJ is murdered there. She wants to get to the bottom of his death.















The police chief tells her that the man behind the killing is Ghost Eddie, a biomechanic who helped Sarissa found the movement.



She kills the guy.

Comments

[espanolbot]

Interesting. :)

The rise of cybernetics will be interesting to see in the upcoming years, though considering people at the moment are perfectly willing to reject things like flu vaccines due to media bias whipping up panic, I doubt that it'll be any time soon.

[hyperactivator]

Why do they need these cybernectic killing tools? For duck hunting?

[jlroberson]

You've clearly never met the Metal Ducks of Death.

They have daisycutters.

[lakrids404]

Probably the same reason?, that people wants to own guns, fear and a want to be feared/respected.

[proteus_lives]

That's a stereotype of gun-owners.

[jarodrussell]

Why do you want a two-ton slab of metal capable of mowing people down at 80MPH?

[jarodrussell]

Yes, because only Americans realize the value of cars.

[hyperactivator]

To go to the bank. I also want my electricly super heated metal box to bake muffins.

[hyperactivator]

You can beat someone to death with a stool but it was made to sit on. These devices were made to kill.

[jarodrussell]

Clubs were built to kill, but someone figured out how to use them to play baseball. Knives were built to kill, but we learned they could be used to cut rope, wire, cheese, etc. Their Dark MEK might be designed to kill, but that doesn't mean the underlying technology doesn't have non-violent, practical purposes.

[darkblade]

So their bloody dog doesn't laugh at their miserable failures.

[box_in_the_box]

Oh, look. Yet another Warren Ellis comic in which characters don't actually engage in dialogue as much as in dueling monologues, which consist of regurgitated sci-fi concepts that countless other authors have explored earlier and better, complete with an Ellisonian protagonist who encourages keeping the world and/or life "interesting."

The irony here is that we're rapidly reaching the point where Ellis' writing fails the Turing test.

[lakrids404]

near future sf don't, have as rule, a long period before the future makes them irrelevant

[box_in_the_box]

There's a difference between writing sci-fi concepts that will expire faster than milk cartons, versus writing the exact same sci-fi concepts that William Gibson did back in the 1980s without adding anything new or worthwhile beyond the dubious merits of all your characters talking like the author.

This shit is to the act of storytelling what Puff Daddy "covering" songs like "Roxanne" is to the world of music.

[lakrids404]

Oh... so the story is not from the eighties ?!

[box_in_the_box]

It was published in 2003.

Anyone who thinks this is a "forward-thinking" story has obviously never read any sci-fi story that has been published in the past 30 years.

[superboyprime]

I'm not much of a science-fiction reader. What do you mean by that? I'd think cybernetic body parts would be a subject like space travel in that it never really gets old. It's like it exists in any substantial way yet.

[khamelea]

"It was published in 2003."

I never would have guessed.

[jarodrussell]

Only if by 80's you mean 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mek_%28comics%29

[cmdr_zoom]

Though you'd be forgiven for thinking so.

[jarodrussell]

I remember being really excited about MEK. Then I remember reading MEK. Then I remember NOT being really excited about MEK. Interesting how the cycle has repeated itself with Doktor Sleepless.

[zegim]

In before "but Warren Ellis hates superheroes!".

Now, seriously. I'd like a shooting tongue.

[zegim]

I have a weakness for its simplicity.

I guess I could settle for defrosting earlobes or a chin with an USB port or anything creative like that, but a literal killing tongue is just my style.

[halloweenjack]

Then you should read Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams--80s style cyberpunk actually written in the 80s, and a more faithful version of Zelazny's Damnation Alley than the movie of the same. Trust me, every time you french-kiss someone after that, you'll think of The Weasel and shudder a little.

[darkblade]

Why would someone say that about one of his non superhero comics?

[zegim]

Because it's a discussion about comic books in the Internet.

Unrelated rants and complaints are par of the course for this stuff.

[strannik01]

Motto :)

[arbre_rieur]

In the first page of her returning to Sky Road, in the second panel, what are those grey narration boxes supposed to be? Who's thinking/speaking them?

[box_in_the_box]

Cyber-Deadpool?

[superboyprime]

I've never been able to figure that out myself. Seriously, what ARE those supposed to be? Can anyone help?

[lamashtar]

Cyberpunk is only for rich people!

[superfangirl1]

Shooting robotic tongue that pretty cool.

[psychopathicus_rex]

It remains to be seen just how extreme this sort of thing will ever actually get. I mean, piercings and tattoos have been around for thousands of years in one form or another, and they haven't really progressed much further than people getting parts of themselves pierced and tattooed that, um, really shouldn't be. I bet that when and if cyborg implants ever get this sophisticated, people will basically just get implanted with variations of stuff that's already in wide use - miniaturized cellphones installed inside your ear and jaw, subcutaneous iPods that you can turn on and off by winking, internet access in your brain - that sort of thing. I find it hard to believe that the police would EVER allow deadly weapons that are installed directly into your body, even for cops or soldiers - that sort of thing is just a horrible accident waiting to happen. And, of course, you couldn't get any of the REALLY extreme modifications unless you were willing to get a limb chopped off and replaced, which I think most people would be just a liiiiittle bit squeamish about. I can't see that sort of thing lasting for very long - it'd be a blip on the radar.

[darkblade]

Well the Waramps kids will be freaking badass. [/tasteless joke]

[psychopathicus_rex]

And one that I don't understand. Who are the Waramps kids?

[darkblade]

Might help if I didn't fail at punchuation there.

War Amps is a charitly for vetrans and children who through incident or deformity have lost limbs. As I said it was quite tasteless.

http://www.waramps.ca/about/history.html

[psychopathicus_rex]

Oh, I get it. Well, why not - if you've got to go through life with a prosthetic limb, you might as well make it a real nifty one.

[salamangkiero]

It's a rather old story for sci-fi. I would have been more amazed if the idea here is that there is no person, per se - but then, that's stepping into Gibson/GiTS territory.

[joysweeper]

Eh. I prefer cybernetics as a detail, or something to angst about. Because c'mon, Ton Phanan! No future!

I was also hoping to see some kind of really interesting designs, since I like drawing cyborgs and want something fresh. There were ideas here that I haven't seen before, but nothing that compelling.