That’s right, folks. I bring you Shatter, “The First Computerized Comic!” So there I was, browsing the ten cent rack at a local bookstore–the section where they dump all of the stuff that they can’t buy from customers but offer to place outside, with the ten and twenty-five cent proceeds donated to NPR–and I happened upon this interesting looking book. I saw this messy cover and was immediately intrigued by the apparent mix of Blade Runner and Han Solo. Needless to say, I was sold. Chalk this one up in the “marginalized post-apocalyptic and/or futuristic” column, a la Neon City. Shatter strikes me as pretty typical of the genre. A lonerish anti-hero, operating on the outskirts of a mostly ruined and corrupt–though technologically opulent–society takes on an intriguing mercenary job.  In Shatter’s world, mercenaries aren’t mercenaries, they’re called “Temps” and they apply for jobs via “Temp Help” centers.  This comic stakes the now-well-understood claim that in our current moment, and increasingly in the future, labor won’t be fixed, stable, continuous, and with benefits, but rather intermittent, flexible, only when necessary, and without much stable and tangible reward.  Just ask America’s office temps, day laborers, seasonal part-timers, adjunct lecturers, and private contractors.

Enough for evident social values.  This is, after all, primarily “weird” because it claims to be the first “computerized” comic.  Let’s investigate this claim a little further.  In the inside-front cover, Mike Gold offers an editorial in which he praises the recent availability and usefulness of the MAC (this is, after all, 1985) and outlines how the idea came about.  Thoroughly in the thrall of the technological capabilities of the MAC, not to mention Neuromancer and a probably significant amount of caffeine, the creators wrote the story and created the art on the computer, but confessed to having added the color after the fact.

This is a great curiosity piece, but the artwork strikes our contemporary sensibilities (read: MY contemporary sensibilities) as pretty terrible.  The story itself is quite recycled, the imagery an awkward, lo-fi mix of cyberpunk and sketch-book doodles.  What the artist was able to do with the wonky early MAC does impress, though the book wears out its welcome pretty quick.  The adventures of Shatter were apparently continued in a series called Jon Sable, Freelance and in his own line.

And now, I leave you with…