Shadowy Graphic Novels, We've done inspiring movies to death, so... Options

[Sir_Psycho]

The Global Frequency is an independent rescue/crisis response team of one thousand and one members. Each are selected for missions based on their individuals skillsets, locations and backgrounds. So let's say a government created, cybernetically enhanced monster is set loose on L.A. Aleph, the main operator/co-ordinator for the global frequency dials up GF agents in L.A. and co-ordinates with them to neutralize the threat. These aren't just ex-military personnel. There are scientists, technicians, athletes (one episode focused on indian girl in london who was a Le Parkour adept... ahem... expert), occultists, hackers, assassins, cops, pilots, anthropologists and more. And based on who is in L.A. in that moment, they are tasked and co-ordinated to stop the cyber-monster. Sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it?

It's a graphic novel I read, and when it was recommended to me, a friend said, "you'll like it, it's very Shadowrun". And while it is not shadowrun, it bears some similarities. The combination of unorthodox operatives is one. One technician was an inventor of "less-than-lethal" technology, who quit when his technology was used in riots by police and people were killed. There was a depressed ex-commando with a powerful cyber-arm. A alexander Crowley wanna-be, a Le Parkour adept (who had get across london, across the thames and to the top of the London Eye to diffuse a chemical weapon.

The best one was an interesting dilemma. Where a techno cult of about a hundred people, believing that the internet is their god take one floor of a skyscraper hostage, wire the floor with explosives, and then they all take a slow acting poison, and the bombs go off when the biomonitors attatched to the "supreme leader" fail to pickup a heartbeat. They make some very silly demands of the government and wait it out. Unfortunately for everyone, they only broadcast this through their website, which no one other than the members read. Global Frequency finds out though, so two operatives are called. One is an aboriginal street cop, the other is a female british assassin. They have to get onto a certain floor of a building carrying a whole lot of guns, and get past a hundred fanatics who are, according to schrodinger, already dead for all intents and purposes, whose leader is wired to a bomb that no-one knows about. It's a very fun comic to read.

Do you know what it would take to make a bionic man? You'd have to replace a big chunk of the skeleton, and introduce artificial muscle, otherwise the first time he used his bionic arm it'd rip free from the rest of his body. New skin. Serious changes to lung structure. Blood replacement. What would that do to your mind? Would you want to be trapped in a lab complex with him?

The point of this thread is to suggest to other Dumpshockers graphic novels that make good shadowrun inspiration. So go to it. I often get graphic novels from local libraries, as it becomes more common for them to stock decent collections. I have one more suggestion for now:

Transmetropolitan. So funny, and an amazingly colourful and disturbing impression of a futuristic sprawl. It's somewhere inbetween shadowrun and the fifth element.

Transmetropolitan is a comic book published by Vertigo comics, the science fiction part of the DC Comics empire. It deals with a journalist named Spider Jerusalem, a raving lunatic (sometimes) and voice of reason in a wacky futuristic urban world. You've seen many visions of possible chaotic "world gone slightly mad" technologically insane futures, but rarely do the heroes of these worlds ever lay down the smack upon them. And that's pretty much what Spider does. Spider was a columnist many moons ago who wrote books that made him a star and beloved/hated public icon. He signed a book deal and fled to the mountains to write. However, he discovered that he couldn't write a damn thing; the only way he could write was if he was in the city, which he hated and still seems to hate regardless of how it fuels him. After paying five bucks (and a dead chipmunk) in tolls to get back into the city, he was soon on his way to assaulting receptionists, housing two-headed cats, and walking his way through a nudie bar and into the heart of a riot. And all in his first week back.

Transmetropolitan follows Spider as he harasses people with the ugly, painful truth until they are practically driven insane, fill their pants up with defecation wrought of abject terror, or simply kick his ass. Then he writes articles about them.

This critically-acclaimed, Eisner-nominated comic is available in most comic book stores and is "suggested for mature readers" (strong language, graphic pictures for the weak of heart, and terms and themes guaranteed to offend any pussies in the audience).

All of which are available at everybody's favorite online, money-grubbing, life-force-stealing, mega-corporation (embodying everything Spider hates): amazon.com.

.

If you can get your hands on it, it's hilarious, amazingly clever, and you'll be amazed by such things as the bowel disruptor. It also gives a great idea of what the Shadowrun media would be like, access-wise.

Transmet is written by Warren Ellis, a funny and intelligent british champion of graphic novels.

The transformation of mankind’s idealized future over the last century is a fascinating thing. Our tendency to speculate wildly is our greatest trait, resulting in a rich history of lofty, unrealistic goals and incredible literature that only serves to drive us to speculate further; to hope for a future like nothing we’ve ever seen.

From a sky full of hot-air balloons, from which dapper gents doff their hats to ladies on pedal powered flying machines, to pill-food and brushed chrome flying cars, to now, where our idealized future includes skull-mounted USB jacks and HUD’s. However, our visions of the future have a distinct difference from those of our forebears. Namely in that we envision the possibility of a dystopian future, a blasted, rusted heath on which we eke out our misery filled days; which we dream of alongside the optimistic fantasy of a future of soft, off-white plastics, bio-integrated technology, and utopian ideals.

It’s almost as if in the last 50 years or so we’ve finally started to realize that the future might not be coming to save us, but that it might just be one more boot to humanity’s collective chin.

Well that's enough for now. Anyone else read any graphic novels?

[Stahlseele]

heh, depends on play-stile . . one could argue about the crow comics and the warhammer 40k comics . . excuse me, GRAPHIC NOVELS . . i'd probably throw in Deadpool just for Kicks and mybe the Wolverine Comic-Series . . There's a Graphic Novel in the post Tron2.0 Setting one could throw in too . .

[Fabe]

When I saw this thread I was going to add "Transmetropolitan but you already done so. I have all 10 volumes, there is almost nothing in that comic you couldn't borrow and add to shadow run. what we really need is Shadowrun stats for Spider, his Filthy assistances ,Vance, hell lets throw in the Cat too as well as some of the tech as well.

[martindv]

Thinking about the whole bunraku thread, the Slavers trade from the Punisher MAX series is pretty disturbing.

[mfb]

seriously? Marvel comics. pretty much the whole line, right now, at least those in the 616 universe. Civil War/Initiative is seriously some of the best dystopic popular fiction on the market today.

Global Freq was good--really good. another really good one that might not immediately come to mind is Army@Love. it's a very fast, left-field look at near-future war, technology, and pop culture.

Hellboy is a good one; the folklore it presents and distorts is good shit.

[Ancient History]

Silent Dragon

Neuromancer

[Sir_Psycho]

I mainly liked Hellboy for the art style and appropriation of imagery and folklore. Which is funny, because a lot of my fellow graphic novel readers (like this chick Hryssa, a big tank girl/Sand-man fan) really couldn't engage because of it.

Speaking of Warren Ellis again, I found This wierd thing. He refused to call it cyber-punk, preferring "decadent sci-fi". Very short and wierd.

He also did one called Ocean, where a United Nations weapons inspector goes to a space station orbiting the Europa Moon (the one that's an ocean in a frozen shell) and ends up in conflict with the mega-corporation Doors (yes, a hilarious microsoft reference), where all the workers have downloaded worker personalities, and have had their real names and personalities data-locked from their consciousness as stipulated in their contracts. An amazing inspiration for uses of P-fix technology. For example, when the corporation wants soldiers, it hands an employee a gun and loads the "corp soldier" p-fix and activesofts and there you have it. A paper-pusher turned commando. And if he survives, then he can easily go back to his desk!

[mfb]

oh, speaking of Wildstorm--Point Blank and Sleeper. fantastic noiresque crime/espionage. then there's 100 Bullets and Criminal. shit, just google Ed Brubaker and buy anything he's ever written. Brubaker is man who is not afraid to destroy his characters.

[hyzmarca]

Death Note: What happens when a teenager decides to start murdering convicted murderers using ritual magic.
Blame!: Probably what would have happened if Deus won.
Wanted: Super powered criminals
Black Magic
Ghost in the Shell
Gunnm
Blue Sonnet
Petshop of Horrors

[martindv]

oh, speaking of Wildstorm--Point Blank and Sleeper. fantastic noiresque crime/espionage. then there's 100 Bullets and Criminal. shit, just google Ed Brubaker and buy anything he's ever written. Brubaker is man who is not afraid to destroy his characters.

Not being afraid to destroy himself puts things in perspective.

Seriously. He wrote a semi-autobiographical graphic novel. Not one of these collections, trades, premiere, absolute, omnibus, etc. It was an honest-to-god graphic novel called A Complete Lowlife which would be a nice intro for how a somewhat normal person can slide eventually down towards SINless and possibly shadowrunner status (or just die).

People talk about "street level". His work is the epitome of street level. From the non-superhero focus in Gotham Central to some truly heinous things he wrote in Catwoman, and the sheer amount of Hell he's put the title characters through in his DC and Marvel books. This guy was the man who killed Steve Rogers after basically pyschologically torturing him for the first twenty-four issues in his run on Captain America. He put Daredevil in prison, and then got Punisher in prison. That was great. He saw a cop nearby, saw a pimp, and killed the pimp in front of the cop.

I've read almost everything he's written from the last ten years. It's one of the few runs of Authority that I could bear to read. Sleeper/Point Blank, Criminal, everything. It's nothing but inspiration. He got Charlie Huston on Moon Knight and Duane Swierczyski on Cable (Cable. This is the man who wrote Wheelman, which is as far from superheros as you can imagine while being in the pulp crime genre).

But just to distinguish, I can't stand graphic novels. Most of them are self-indulgent tripe written by people who think they're the next R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Brubaker

[Kanada Ten]

Cairo: five strangers - a drug runner, a journalist, an American ex-pat, a troubled student, and an Israeli soldier - find themselves on a quest to recover a powerful stolen hookah. Written by G. Willow Wilson and drawn by M.K. Perker.

[Critias]

The Losers. Stop whatever you're doing and go read it.

[DocTaotsu]

It's been said, I've said it myself and I want to prepend this with a flat statement that I find most manga boorish and insipid.

Ghost in the Shell, anyway you can get your hands on it. If it isn't magical, GitS probably talked about it. There are so many great hooks for runs, NPC's, SOTA gear, and so forth. If you can get your hands on the original manga I recommend that you get the one that has the authors notes in it. The sidebars he has with himself and the reader are pretty damn insightful especially since things can get pretty complex graphically.

Planetes, great little hard sci-fi space story. It's a near perfect realization of a future where something we think is totally awesome (going to space) is something everyday and mundane (being a trash collector in space). Word of Warning: The animated series is craptastic. This delicate interesting interplay between characters gets smashed by all sorts of crap writing. They also introduced characters who's sole purpose is to provide comic relief, something unforgivable in my mind.

And Transmet has made more than a few appearances in my games. Baby Seal Eyes anyone? They're delcious and healthy!

For magical inspiration I turn to Hellblazer. The writing and art varies through the series as the people who worked on it changed, but as a whole it had some great crunchy bits. It's certainly my inspiration for "Everyday Magic In a Modern World." The magic in Hellblazer is subtle, obscure, and utterly unforgiving. There's a great scene where Constantine has been forced out of his body and is being chased by some horrible beasties that feast on his essence. He has to stay alive long enough to figure out a way to get back into his own skin. There is also great inspiration for off brand geas, variations on ritual spell casting, alternative traditions, and paracritters (flying vampire children trapped on an island full of toxic spirits anyone?) If your groups magic user isn't terrified of magic (as mine isn't) this is great source material to remind them that magic is weird, doesn't care what you want, and will utterly destroy you in a heartbeat. It's also a great way to demonstrate that magic can be mind blowingly powerful without ever having to throw a fireball or equivalent.

[ElFenrir]

For less technical, but with a little hint of strange powers with one of the villains: Weiss Kreuz.

-Secret orginization under the Japanese Police Force
-Team of guys, each with combat skills AND other skills which compliment them and each other, and their own personalities, who are all assassins on top of it(ok, wetwork specialized groups to exist)
-Assassins with cover job(Flower Shop), with the Fake ID so to speak
-They have Code Names
-They have a kind of permanent ''Johnson'' they work for that gives them missions
-Secretaries and other 'contacts' that give them info
-Going against major bigwig rich crime guy
-Enemies, four of which are pretty much Adepts/have 'magic' ability in some way(one guy can even see a few seconds into the future, one guy is telekinetic, one dude obviously has Pain Tolerance 10, Increased Strength and alot of Body, one guy must have a big score in Improved Reflexes and Jumping)
-Crazed scientist at one point doing biomutation stuff

It's got alot of stuff in it that reminds me of Shadowrun for some reason; even though it doesn't have any cyberware so to speak.

[Fortune]

The Losers.

Dude! I used to read the original series when I was a kid. I never had a clue they made a new series. Thanks! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Fuchs]

Eden. Cyborgs, criminals, world-spanning deadly illness, dystopia.

Appleseed by Shirow.

[It trolls!]

The Losers. Stop whatever you're doing and go read it.

Came here to post this. It ain't got no cyborgs or magic but I don't know of anything that comes closer to a Shadowrunner's daily work.

[DocTaotsu]

I got that vibe off the Losers but I could never pin down a copy of the first TPB so I keep forgetting to buy it.

Not graphic novels but I've been reading old time pulp stories and they're wonderful run fodder. I guess it's just written into cyberpunks genetic heritage.

Also I'm surprised no one has brought up Sin City for that very reason.

And Martin? What plot arc of Authority was he in charge of?

[Sir_Psycho]

Just posting for a related bitch. Just got my hand on the second volume of Global Frequency, and some fucker has cut the last pages out of at least two of the stories. Who the fuck does that to a library copy graphic novel? Do you need to deprive unknown future readers from an ending from your anonymous position, or did you just need to have the end of a narrative on your wall? What the fuck?

On the upshot I've got the second volume of Y: The Last Man. My god that is such a crazy and fascinating premise. In case you've never heard of it. In a single moment, every single male mammal on earth spontaneously dies in a plume of blood. Except for Yorik, an amateur escape artist and a pitiful example of the last male of the species. The comic consists of him getting angry and picking fights with girls who either want to capture and sell him, use him as a surrogate for their dead men or kill him to rid the world of the final patriarchal figure. But it's an amazing portrayal of a society without men. So I'm not so angry.

[Demonseed Elite]

DMZ. I was reading it during my brainstorming for NYC 2070 and it definitely fits with how I imagine New York in the period of time between the Quake and Reconstruction.

[Ancient History]

Scalped for the NAN

[DocTaotsu]

Ah yes, DMZ is one of my favorites. There's some new "Reporter In Peril" (cant' recall the actual name at the moment) tpb out. I was pretty excited until I flipped through it and realized that it depicted American military members as blood crazed faceless (they all have crazy Ghost Recon masks) maniacs who take pleasure in shooting civilians with robots and executing elderly women in exactly the same fashion as that famous Vietnam picture. I'll be the first to admit that American service members have done awful and illegal things in Iraq (And around the world). I'm of the pretty common group of people who believe they should be put to death, possibly by being eaten by wild dogs. I know it's a comic but jesus, an Lt. Colonel (O-5) personally putting down an elderly person... AROUND CAMERAS? Not only is he an evil bastard but he's a goddamn idiot on top of that (if only those two things actually went hand in hand).

Maybe the overall portrayal is more fair. I'm more than happy to embrace something other than "American Service Members Always Save Babies and Shit Healthy And Nutritious Apple Pie" but good god, do we have to loop around to the other side?

That's one of the reasons I liked DMZ (at least the first TPB, haven't been able to get the 2nd) there were some real assholes in uniforms tooling around out there but there were a few humans too. I particularly liked the urban super sniper that decided to go native and hang out in his impenetrable fortress of DOOoooom, with no bullets.


Y: was one of my favorite comics for a good long while. The problem is that I got too invested in the story and became unconvinced that it would have a satisfying conclusion. I call it "The Lost Effect". I'd rather not follow a series than follow it and find out that The Big Pay Off totally blows and the writer was just stringing us along.

[Synner]

Let's try some European stuff:

Nathan Never(monthly ongoing) - Noir detective stories in a cyberpunk future (infamous for ripping stories from movies and novels)

Live War Heroes (stand alone) - Mix a renegade company man, an anti-corp extremist, a merc based reality show, corporate machinations and media manipulation, and you get a brilliant little gem.

Reality Show - Think Lone Star running a reality show with its star detectives. Set in a cyberpunk Barcelona. First story arc features an inhuman serial killer with a twist, the second combines alleged Islamic terrorists with media manipulation.

Carmen McCullum (alternative link, Delcourt seems to be offline for some reason) - NewIRA terrorists turned merc gets involved with cyberpunk megacorps, AIs, transhumans, and the Yakuza amongst other things. Has since spun off into a second series portraying the character's early years.

Travis- Set in the same universe as Carmen McCullum (there have been a couple of crossovers), the stories of a shuttlejockey/undercover Interpol agent (Travis), a hardcore shadow operative/street sam (Vlad), and a hacker extraordinaire (PacMan). The villian in the first story arc is brilliant, the second arc is more down to earth, and the third kicks off with some serious action. Also had a spin-off series following PacMan's hacker clique Karmatronics. Suggestion: get the boxed set with the first arc.

[Blade]

Well, I can't go without inserting a shamless plug for my own Shadowrun webcomic : Another Runner in the Night

I hope I'll be able to resume my work on it soon.

[Fabe]

Planetes, great little hard sci-fi space story. It's a near perfect realization of a future where something we think is totally awesome (going to space) is something everyday and mundane (being a trash collector in space). Word of Warning: The animated series is craptastic. This delicate interesting interplay between characters gets smashed by all sorts of crap writing. They also introduced characters who's sole purpose is to provide comic relief, something unforgivable in my mind.

Never read the manga,its out of print as far as I know. But I love the anime,well worth checking out regardless of what Doc says.