Blade Runner 2019, Vol. 1: Los Angeles by Michael Green, Mike Johnson, Andres Guinaldo (Illustrator)
As I sat down to read this, I was kinda hoping that the story would unfold and I would hear the Vangelis soundtrack in my head. That I would see the outdated yet still amazing Special effects and I would feel like I was watching a Blade Runner movie. It is hard to talk about this book without spoilers so let’s start by saying I think fans of the movie who like comics will enjoy this side story that happens in the same city and year as Rick Deckard’s story.
Co-written by DC comics veteran Michael Green who has written long runs with Superman, Supergirl, and Batman, and Mike Johnson who is the most prolific Star Trek comics writer ever. The art is handled by Andres Guinaldo who also has tons of DC experience. First things first DC and Alcon did well with the hiring. The team did amazing.
The art itself looks and feels like Blade Runner even feeling like Syd Mead concept art at times. Hat it is One of the things that makes the movie what it is the lived-in feeling. Sure this book benefits from building off the movie but that is the point of a media tie-in. Expanding the existing world, we know and are dying to get more of. Mission accomplished.
I am going to spoil things while talking about this, but I am having fun. There were clear and important decisions made here. This follows the film in vibe tone and world-building completely. This is THE 2019 of Blade Runner. There is little to nothing of the PKD novel, except a few minutes that inherit moments of the film.
As a Dickhead there is not much here to pick- apart, Blade Runner doesn’t have much of the source material and this has even less. That is OK, as a fan of the movie there is plenty of fan service done tastefully.
The story follows Aahna ‘Ash’ Ashina who is a Blade Runner in the same LAPD adjacent office as Deckard. If you read the script you can assume Deckard is up north hunting Alaskan skin-jobs during these events. Her side hustle is a little darker but she has a secret she is dealing with. You see Ash has a secret, she is paralyzed and she is able to fake it by using illegal tech. She has to plug into her wheelchair and recharge every so often or she will lose control of her legs. She is working to save money to get off-world, and she does this by stealing and selling body parts of the Replicants she retires.
She is the perfect morally corrupt member of the Blade Runner team to be hired for the under the table and off the books investigation into a missing mother and daughter. The father is tied to this world by way of a friendship with Tyrell Corp and the company founder.
Ash is a great flawed character; she is beaten-up and had a rough go of things. She is tough and you could imagine being very good at her work. As she investigates we get a great reversal on the Blade Runner storyline as Ash discovers the mother she is looking for is a replicant meant to copy and replace Tycoon Alexander Selwyn’s wife who died of cancer. This is a neat storyline as you could imagine a rich man in this situation paying the money to replace his wife so his young daughter can delay the loss of her mother. The ethics of this kind of Replicant replacement becomes the ethical question at the heart of this story. Smartly this takes us to the south of the border Replicant sanctuary.
This is media-tie in done right, I enjoyed the story and it made me wish we had a movie of this. Excited for volume 2 and 3 for sure now.
Anthony did a spoiler-free review for the Dickheads YouTube channel...
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