Self/Made #2 - Image Comics

SELF/MADE #2, January 2019

Selling 5,436 copies in January 2019, and continuing Rebecca’s exploration of the “relationship between a creation and their creator”, Mat Groom’s screenplay for Issue Two of “Self/Made” is arguably demonstrative of the Australian author being a ‘self-taught’ writer who “over a long period of time” has “been reading up on story structure and dynamics” rather than someone academically schooled in “the specifics of scripting”. For whilst the “open-to-the-public storytelling” class teacher’s narrative undeniably provides a couple of moderately tense moments within this twenty-two page periodical, such as when Amala Citali fleetingly faces off against a formidably ferocious dragon, or a computer-generated non-playable character called Marcellus is given the choice to kill or be killed atop a breath-taking cityscape, nothing particularly pulse-pounding actually takes place until the comic’s very end when both of its lead characters are simply dropped into the co-operative game Plaga so as “to kill a ghost king.”

Indeed, the primary focus of “Overtime” debatably doesn’t even seem to be Rebecca’s investigation into just why an NPC “is opening the throat of a user like she’s gutting a damned trout in a game that’s supposed to be in front of consumers in six weeks.” But rather a laboriously long-winded insight into both how incredibly unpopular the pony-tailed female computer programmer clearly is with the rest of her work colleagues, and the lengths an enormously smug Bryce will go to in order to get his boss, Stuart Busuttil, to “scrub” the supposed next step in artificial intelligence; “Enough! The way I see it, you’re both losing your goddamned minds over what very well could be a freak accident.”

Fortunately however, all of these rather tiring time-consuming discussions, arguments, counter-consultations and dialogue-heavy deliberations are at least well-pencilled by Eduardo Ferigato, who genuinely manages to imbue the “extraordinarily unproductive” Rebecca with all the weariness a reader may well expect to see from an employee who seems to be carrying the weight of the world upon her shoulders. In fact, the Brazilian illustrator’s ability to depict a person’s innermost emotions or fears with just a few well-placed lines upon their face is extraordinary, and it is abundantly clear just why Groom believes the artist (alongside colorist Marcelo Costa) has done “an incredible job of making every new world we visit gorgeous, striking and unique. Given how quickly we move through some of these worlds, I’ve been blown away by how alive and thought-through and specific they all are…”

Writer: Mat Groom, Artist: Eduardo Ferigato, and Colors: Marcelo Costa