With the latest instalments of cult comic-book Alex Automatic coming to Kickstarter, it’s probably about time that we review the series so far, including the forthcoming issues.
At first glance, Alex Automatic appears to be a spy-fi action thriller about a chap called Alex Anderson who has been ‘enhanced’ with all sorts of cybernetics by a shadowy secret organisation. The process that has turned him into a phenomenal killing machine has also shattered his mind.
This means that the storytelling is not in a simple straight line. We flashback and flash-forward throughout the narrative. The lines between Alex’s programmed reality and what’s actually going on are blurred. The story also descends into meta-narrative, becoming more a story about the nature of stories than its own thing.
What appears to be a tangled and incoherent mess is something much deeper and messier; a complex experiment in the nature of nostalgia, comic book heroes and the causally murderous nature of super spies. Writer Fraser Campbell is aiming to mess with your mind, and this does not make for easy reading. Though comics are the perfect medium for story-within-story style shenanigans, Campbell really pushes the edge here.
He’s readily assisted by artists James Corcoran and David B. Cooper. The style is early ‘80s, harking back to comics such as Battle and The Eagle. Because Fraser keeps shifting the scene, the art has to adapt whilst still keeping that simple action pulp feel. This becomes a lot smoother in the later books as the creators clearly get into the rhythm. Lettering and design is courtesy of king of the font-monkeys, Colin Bell, so of course, it’s very clear and adapts to the narrative very well.
The book is about as polished as indie comics are, and still has that edgy feel that we’ve come to expect from our indie books. We wouldn’t call the Alex Automatic series fun, but it is a very engaging (if difficult) read.
The Alex Automatic Kickstarter ends Sunday May 24. More information can be found on the Cabal Comics website.
