Human Nature: A Satirical Science Fiction Graphic Novel

A billionaire gets humbled in this phantasmagoric series launch from filmmaker Aronofsky, his Black Swan collaborator Ari Handel, screenwriter Jeff Welch, and Eisner-nominated Argentinian cartoonist Martín Morazzo (the Ice Cream Man series). On a surreal hillside, a group of teenagers are lectured by grizzled Uncle Duke about the “good, bad, and ugly” of their weird world. In the magical land of Omaha, he tells them, he became rich by monopolizing the chicken processing industry. When he got cancer, he simply bought a cryogenics firm. It returned him to life years later, but as a captive in an apparent outer space prison within an electrified force field. His fellow detainees schooled him in how to avoid punishment from the alien eyes that surveilled them from above—and that the eyes enjoyed a good performance; his Elvis impersonation proved useful. Based on an unproduced script by Welch, the writing leans heavy on the cornpone narration (“Them raindrops falling on my noggin gave me a fresh idea”), and often strains for laughs, though some of the grim referential humor lands: the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime” plays inside the force field–protected pen; “Rod Serling was here... Vonnegut too,” reads a carving on a tree. By the close of the first volume, Duke’s gone to battle with one alien eye—but where the teens all fit in is yet to be revealed. The detailed, angular art by Morazzo skillfully grounds this trippy tale. Readers with a taste for edgy satire will want to tune in to this mash-up of The Prisoner and The Matrix. (Mar.)