NoBrow: SP4RX

SP4RX is a tight little cyberpunk thriller that maximizes story economy and minimizes everything else while still retaining its satirical edge. The world that creator Wren McDonald introduces is a familiar one, where a corporation has its fingers in everything and introduces cybernetic program that allows "lower level" workers to take up to 36 hour shifts. Other nefarious characters want to take control of these lower level, refitted workers to make them into their own personal mind-controlled and high-powered army. The satire in this book is mostly seen in its margins, much like the Paul Verhoeven film Robocop. The grimy quality of this future city reminds me a bit of Moebius and Moebius-influenced artists like Brandon Graham, only it's rendered in a more typical NoBrow style. The characters are mostly rendered in a cute style where their faces are pretty much just dots and lines, but McDonald gets a lot of mileage out the essential looseness of his figure drawing.The light purple wash in the story gives everything an odd appearance, but not in a way that sticks out too much.

SP4RX follows a prototypical sinister corporation that has made life "better" by introducing "cybernetic efficiency public-aid program" ELPIS, essentially designed to turn workers living in the Lower Levels of the city into hyper-efficient workers that can go for 36 hours at a time. Even more sinister is a conspiracy to take over their programming and turn them into a tireless, durable army. A hacker named SP4RX is hired to find a piece of hardware that winds up being crucial in this regard, both to the conspiracy and the resistance against them. The best thing McDonald does with SP4RX is make him utterly apathetic to the ideals of the revolution; he just wants to live quietly off the grid, hang out with his best friend CL1PP3R, and make money. Circumstances don't allow this to happen, as he's manipulated by both the state and the resistance into making various moves, until he is finally able to play his own game.

Though the action in the book is fairly dark and brutal, McDonald is able to inject some pitch-black levity into a number of the scenes. The ELPIS cyborgs are of course turned into weapons that murder humans, but only after asking them "How do you contribute to the efficiency of this level?" Watching the ELPIS cyborgs run amok is one of the funnest things to follow in a book that's filled with fluid & visceral fight & chase scenes. In many respects, McDonald pays the most attention to the action going on in the city itself, as it's the most fleshed-out "character" in the book. SP4RX is little more than a grim, terse loner who does the right thing in the end for his own reasons. McDonald depicts the leader of the resistance as kind of a kook who rambles on about principles that no one cares about, like freedom. The villains are comically corrupt and over-the-top, but even this was a reflection of the authority they usually feel. Both heroes and villains use the same kind of ruthless methods, which McDonald subtly but pointedly demonstrates in the course of the book. Changing the world would mean a total paradigm shift that integrated humanity and artificial intelligence in a meaningful way, and this book depicts a bump in the road on the way to the paradigm shift. In sacrificing himself, SP4RX inadvertently found a way to alter his world and integrate man and machine in new ways. That's only hinted at that at the end, but that kind of vagueness of motivation is what makes the book so much fun to read in the end.