So first off this is volume that brought memories from works like Wolverine Weapon X and Silent Dragon. Entire look and feel, overall story, makes this book feel like something from decades ago, not from 2017.

First thing is art - truly great. Level of details, panoramas of the LA and Tokyo areas .... they are just beautiful. Assault scene, ambush on Led Dent in Tokyo, it is not just event on small piece of land, it moves across the shore of the river and then moves over the waterfall to the rocky coast below where blades flicker from every direction cutting everyone, our heroes and assailants. Entire look and feel is epic, cinematic.

Story wise book also holds its own. We are shown near future where LA is broken into smaller Islands after the world level catastrophe (rest of the world is also changed, it seems like every nation is controlled by its own warlord). Everywhere technology rules and people have lost their jobs because there is no need to work anymore. To keep them busy with something, nations have given their populace to indulge in sensory overloads - idiotic shows, sex overload, murders, mayhem, destruction, bullying, just think Clockwork Orange to the Nth degree, but with government encouraging such behavior. And to keep people even more under control they are given Juice, nanite machines that put people even more under the influence of media and general sensory stimulation. To enforce the rule new order is created, Constables, humans enhanced by the nanites, grown up in size and muscle but basically made zombies and almost terminally addicted to juice, executing people without even being aware of what they do.

So when two constables, Led who is under full spell of Juice, and Debby, Led's lover truly devoted to him but not a Juice user )only one in the force), are sent to Japan to prepare ground for the invasion it is tragedy in making. Sent by the LA warlord Flak, they will try to find the refuge in Japan (since it is protected from the technological invasion). Unfortunately Flak is not that trusting and he causes Led to fall back and ...... lets say it ends with a heart break.

Cybernetic implants, people going crazy from the use of the nanites and changes done to their bodies, murderous - no, maniacal - cyborgs, ordinary people mowed down without any thought - dystopia in its fullest.

Excellent book , highly recommended. ( )

I really wanted to like this...

But it is just just edgelord sci-fi with cyberpunk aesthetics, including the orientalism that seems so important to those who are just using Blade Runner as a basis.

The art is really something, but art does not a comic make, and the characterisation, dialogue, narrative vacillate between copying homework, uninspired, or just plain bad.

I don't even have the energy to get into things more deeply, because it doesn't warrant it, but women don't need a lifetime of abuse to develop a sense of self, there's some real weird consent stuff, it's absolutely laughable that something ostensibly cyberpunk would have a whole riff about how there used to be good cops, like her dad...in the future! (there have never been good cops. Ever. The only good a cop can do is to stop being a cop. ACAB), neo-busbido in a beautiful, magical samurai garden in Tokyo because it just wouldn't be 'cyberpunk' without fetishising and/ or demonising Japan. I could go on...

One more thing, I swear a fuckload more than I probably should in my reviews, updates, and general speech, but the 'ha ha petite and attractive woman who likes the sex and swears like a caricature of a sailor with tourettes' is the most dudes rock, teenager-brained men writing women shit ever. Yeah, a lot of us fuck and say naughty words, but we generally don't sound like ten year old who have first got their hands of swearwords. The male gaze 'strong female protagonist' manic pixie dream girl energy is through the fucking roof!

I read this on Libby and ended up with the second volume in a random stack of graphic novels from they library, but I genuinely don't know if I'll bother. If it it wasn't already in my house, I definitely wouldn't.

Image and comic readers are better than this. We should celebrate schlock. We all enjoy a bit of schlock from time to time, as a treat, but everything, besides the artwork, gives scholocn a bad name. ( )

This book is fantastic in all ends. The artwork is brutal, Sean Murphy and Matt Hollingsworth team up to create astonishing visuals - seriously, I spent tons of time just admiring the drawings. And the story , well, it's just Remender being Remender, I think you know what I mean. 5 fucking stars. Oh and i loved the Easter eggs related to these guys former works! ( )

Style over substance.

The plot is forced and derivative, the dialogs lazy and childish.
But the art! The art is wonderful,featuring dynamic layouts, detailed backgrounds and truly beautiful colours. ( )

Well written and superbly drawn. A dark yet inspirational story, a combination rarely found in comics or any other medium. A truly beautiful book.

UPDATE: Read it a second time. The writing is often didactic, but makes up for it by tying the lecture to the relationship between the two protagonists: politics made personal, the personal made tragic. ( )