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I Breathed a Body
by Zac Thompson, Mike Marts
**Review originally published in SCREAM Magazine**
I Breathed a Body, a thrilling new graphic novel from AfterShock Comics, opens with America’s most popular social media influencer, Mylo Caliban, making an “apology” video for a stunt that severely injured someone. His PR team, hungry for engagement and traffic, decides to lean into the bad press, and suddenly their company is reaping massive profits from societal rage and ad revenue. In just the first few pages the comic is already unsettlingly accurate in its portrayal of influencer culture, big tech priorities, and social media’s vice grip on humanity – and the story only gets more disturbing from there.
Mylo is the face of a generation and the avatar for his father’s tech company, MyCee, which essentially owns the internet in this not-too-distant future. His father enables Mylo’s behavior as his passion is purely for profits, no matter the cost to decency and civility. Mylo’s quest for viral infamy leads to him creating increasingly sensational and outrageous content, and it’s up to his PR team, led by social media manager Anne Stewart, to fan the flames of indignation and reap the monetary side of shock value.
But, there’s a dark secret underlying the technology that society is plugged into; a living, breathing horror has been tapped into and tampered with, and now it’s growing and spreading. The story quickly goes off the rails in the best possible way, blending in a healthy dose of body horror and supernatural terror. Every few pages there’s a new twist, a new splash of grotesque imagery, a new level of insanity in an increasingly bizarre storyline. This is easily one of the goriest graphic novels I’ve ever read, and there were more than a few audible gasps during certain scenes, such as when someone’s body is drained and disemboweled on a livestream, or when viewers began injecting themselves with a formula that causes them to explode into nightmarish human fungi.
Writer Zac Thompson weaves a variety of social critiques into a highly original narrative brimming with beauty and brutality. The illustrations by Andy MacDonald are striking and captivating, and they bring the story to life with startling detail. I don’t fully understand everything I read in I Breathed a Body, but it demanded my attention from its surprising beginning to its cosmos-altering ending, and I certainly won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.
I Breathed a Body, a thrilling new graphic novel from AfterShock Comics, opens with America’s most popular social media influencer, Mylo Caliban, making an “apology” video for a stunt that severely injured someone. His PR team, hungry for engagement and traffic, decides to lean into the bad press, and suddenly their company is reaping massive profits from societal rage and ad revenue. In just the first few pages the comic is already unsettlingly accurate in its portrayal of influencer culture, big tech priorities, and social media’s vice grip on humanity – and the story only gets more disturbing from there.
Mylo is the face of a generation and the avatar for his father’s tech company, MyCee, which essentially owns the internet in this not-too-distant future. His father enables Mylo’s behavior as his passion is purely for profits, no matter the cost to decency and civility. Mylo’s quest for viral infamy leads to him creating increasingly sensational and outrageous content, and it’s up to his PR team, led by social media manager Anne Stewart, to fan the flames of indignation and reap the monetary side of shock value.
But, there’s a dark secret underlying the technology that society is plugged into; a living, breathing horror has been tapped into and tampered with, and now it’s growing and spreading. The story quickly goes off the rails in the best possible way, blending in a healthy dose of body horror and supernatural terror. Every few pages there’s a new twist, a new splash of grotesque imagery, a new level of insanity in an increasingly bizarre storyline. This is easily one of the goriest graphic novels I’ve ever read, and there were more than a few audible gasps during certain scenes, such as when someone’s body is drained and disemboweled on a livestream, or when viewers began injecting themselves with a formula that causes them to explode into nightmarish human fungi.
Writer Zac Thompson weaves a variety of social critiques into a highly original narrative brimming with beauty and brutality. The illustrations by Andy MacDonald are striking and captivating, and they bring the story to life with startling detail. I don’t fully understand everything I read in I Breathed a Body, but it demanded my attention from its surprising beginning to its cosmos-altering ending, and I certainly won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.