TRANSHUMAN, Jonathan Hickman's funniest comic

When you consider a Jonathan Hickman story, you in all probability don’t consider the humour.

You extra doubtless affiliate his work with massive concepts, science fiction purposes, massive scale sociological strata, political discourse, and so forth. Complex interweaving of superheroes, conspiracies, organizations, and enormous scale battle. But not essentially humour.

His third main work for Image Comics, a collaboration with JM Ringuet, nonetheless gave us a distinct facet to his work. Still laden with massive concepts, some that call to mind an overlap with works from Warren Ellis or Grant Morrison, however with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

And this one goes to eleven.

“Ah, well, Transhuman is the expression that refers to the evolutionary progression from Human to Posthuman.”

Transhuman by Hickman and Ringuet is a type of mockumentary. It tells the story of two companies that branched into totally different areas of transhumanism, following genetic engineering or technological enhancement. After discovering that mixed analysis led to, er, issues.

While darkly humorous, the story is type of an absurd what if relating to superpowers in a extra reasonable world. It broaches the 2 totally different pathways that we might probably obtain posthuman standing after which works to mainly tear them aside. It’s attention-grabbing to see basically the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as interpreted by means of animal experimentation and hapless human volunteers. Made funnier after we see how the 2 work together. Throughout the story, there’s an ever current feeling that irrespective of which path we take, we arrive at destroy. And mundanity.

The presentation of the story is intriguing. Not simply the dialogue pushed, oral historical past sort documentary, but additionally how Hickman adapts to working with an artist. Infographics are minimal. There are actually just a few all through your complete story. And there aren’t any actual textual content pages aside from an introduction and a report. Instead we get Ringuet’s artwork, Which in itself makes extra sense because it’s meant to imitate a type of inform all broadcast, with members virtually speaking on to the viewers. Ringuet has an angular, boxy type that fits the offbeat and darkish humour. It actually comes out with the monkey designs.

“Nature abhors an unwillingness to truly evolve.”

Like Pax Romana earlier than it, it’s very attention-grabbing to see a few of the preliminary seeds of concepts that can seem in several types in later works. Transhuman from Hickman and Ringuet takes a skewer to sensible actual world utility of transhumanism, the issues inherent in it, and that of enterprise capitalists normally. It’s a distinct, virtually absurdist, angle on it that serves as a type of counterpoint to what we’ll see later in Hickman’s X-Men and elsewhere. Fascinating each by itself and in a better context.

Classic Comic Compendium: Transhuman

Transhuman
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: JM Ringuet
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: March 26 – November 26 2008
Also out there collected in Test Pattern: Jonathan Hickman Collection

Read previous entries within the Classic Comic Compendium!