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?

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.