The latest offering from ComiXology Originals, .Self sees  High Crimes writer Christopher Sebela explore a near future dystopian tech story, which these days has the simple short hand of being described as bit like Black Mirror. But what kind of reflection will we see when we look back in the virtual mirror at our .self?

Publisher: ComiXology
Writer: Christopher Sebela
Artist: Cara McGee, Rebecca Nalty, Aditya Bidikar
Price: £1.91 per issue or free with Kindle Unlimited

Nat is your average millennial, enjoying her life working in a fancy store, living in a fancy home with her robot vacuum cleaner, while her doctor husband works all ours of the day and night. Then one day her world gets rocked when a bunch of strange things start happening. It turns out Nat has signed up for a service called Postscript which sees all your memories and social media back up into the cloud on a constant basis. This is in order to create a complete facsimile of you online, which can then be downloaded into a blank and used after your death as grief counselling – allowing your friends and family that one last day. However Nats ‘.self’ file has been hacked and streamed across the internet, and the blanks which were created using her memories begin appearing in her life. But all is not as simple as it sounds (which is something as that is quite a premise!!). Not only do they have her memories and knowledge, but they have also been modded, reprogrammed and warped so that these aren’t simple Stepford Wife clones, but variations of her life with different drives and genders and even different knowledge. Nat attempts to reclaim her life along with two agents from Postscript inc. but can she get a hold of this and regain her quiet life.

Sebela has crafted a really ambitious and well constructed contemporary thriller in .Self. It touches on subjects like identity theft and online personas in a brilliant way, taking them in to new and dark extremes. The idea of our life being played out in public and without your control reminded us a lot of the recent Pam and Tommy series about the Pamela Anderson sex tape leak, as well as stories about revenge porn and the celebrity data leak from a few years ago. There is also the sense of pervading tech paranoia as a result of people’s use of digital assistants like Alexa and Siri, as well as the omni-prescence of social media and the way companies like Amazon and Google have more data about us than we would like to acknowledge. There is also the idea of online bullying and even gaslighting in relationships as Nat attempts to regain control of her own self, while her husband is more worried about his own self.

Sebela takes all these big picture concepts and threads them around an action-packed thriller narrative – as well as a surreal buddy/team concept as Nat joins up with her variants to take on Postscript and get a handle on what is going. She doesn’t know who to trust, as neither her own selves or the company are able to help in the way she wants, so who do you trust when you can;t even trust yourself?!

Visually Sebela pulls double duty creating a tightly designed world for this story which is reminiscent of Jonathan Hickman’s work in The Manhattan Projects. That is not to downplay the excellent work of artist Cara McGee who brings an anime-esque style to the book with sharp characterisation and angular personalities. She does a great job of giving unique personalities to each blank, as well as making the most of the complex world which Sebela has created. She also does a fantastic job of brining action to the book, especially in the opening fight scene. Which is brilliantly Rebecca Nalty’s smart colours which miss cool tech slickness with passionate reds and pinks for more emotive scenes. Aditya Bidikar’s slick lettering complements Sebela’s design, all of which gives the whole thing the kind of indie slickness which we love in Sebela’s works like Crowded and Test as well as many of the other recent Originals books like The All Nighter.

All in all this is a really smart but sinister tale with tons of contemporary parallels and plenty of action and intrigue. Four issues in, we would like it to find its direction a bit more and the story have a bit more focus. However things seem to be heading in an interesting direction and the depth of the world we find ourselves immersed in, means there is plenty of scope for this to develop further. A superb cautionary tale about what happens when technology takes over your life and how difficult it is get it back!