DARK HORSE COMICS
WRITER: Mario Hernandez
ARTIST: Gilbert Hernandez
PIN-UP: Jaime Hernandez
EXTRA ART: Mario Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez
ISBN: 978-1-59582-556-8; hardcover
144pp, B&W, $19.99 U.S., $21.99 CAN
I love Love and Rockets and its creators, Los Bros., Gilbert Hernandez and his brother, Jaime Hernandez. There is a third brother, Mario Hernandez, who created Love and Rockets with his better known brothers, but who doesn’t produce comix as much as Beto and Xaime do.
Citizen Rex was a six-issue miniseries from Mario and Gilbert Hernandez published by Dark Horse Comics in 2009. The recently released Citizen Rex HC collects the original six issues with new text material from Mario and sketchbook drawings from both Mario and Gilbert. There is also frontispiece art by Jaime.
Citizen Rex revolves around two characters. The first is Sergio Bauntin, a gossip blogger also known as “Bloggo.” Sergio writes a web column titled, “The 3 O’Clock” that debunks urban legends and also takes shots at the elite.
The second primary character is CTZ-RX-1, who is also called “Citizen Rex” or just Rex. Rex is the most famous life-like robot in the world. 20 years before this story is set, Rex was involved in a scandalous affair with socialite, Renata Skink. This affair is what brought Rex’s popularity down and led to his deactivation.
Now, Rex is back, but why no one seems to know. Maybe, his return is tied to the simmering robot rights movement. Perhaps, it involves the recent activities of his creator, robot developer, GRA. Whatever the reason, Sergio is drawn into a conspiracy that involves his father, his uncles, his aunts, and even Renata Skink’s daughter, Sigi. There are also plenty of powerful people, including scientists and criminals, that don’t want the truth coming out regarding their dark past and their darker plans for the future.
Practically all of Gilbert Hernandez’s comix, from his soap operatic, generations-spanning, Luba stories to his quirky B-movie-style, science fiction and weird fiction tales. When Mario acts as Gilbert’s collaborator, specifically as the writer, the two create comix that are like Gilbert’s, but are more linear in the storytelling. The Mario-Gilbert stories are less nonsensical, but are no less inventive and imaginative.
Citizen Rex is set in a bizarre, sexy future, but that world is familiar in terms of people’s desires, political machinations, and corporate crimes. The characters, large or small, are as interesting as they are quirky, and Gilbert’s ability to make each character unique gives each character a sense of individuality.
As a work of science fiction, Citizen Rex is both thoughtful and plausible. It makes salient points about the conflict between humans and advancing technology and also what it means to be human. In fact, Citizen Rex does that better than science fiction movies about artificial intelligence that only pretend to be thoughtful, but are really all about action scenes and set pieces.
Of course, Citizen Rex has plenty of melodrama, and there are indeed several big action set pieces. At the heart of this book, however, is the theme of the inscrutable nature of humans and, in this case, robots.
The Citizen Rex HC sketchbook material and extras are generous and extensive, so readers will get a detailed look at the behind-the-scenes creation of this graphic novel. Apparently Neil Gaiman, as guest editor, selected this to be in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2010. Citizen Rex deserves inclusion; it is one of the really quality science fiction comic books of this new century.
A-
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