Book review: Nowhere Men, by Eric Stephenson
"Science is the new rock'n'roll." Or so the four scientists at the centre of the beguiling new Image Comics series Nowhere Men would have you believe.
by Eric Stephenson
Image Comics
3.5 stars
"Science is the new rock'n'roll." Or so the four scientists at the centre of the beguiling new Image Comics series would have you believe. These men have banded together to form World Corp, a research and development company that has a profound influence on the planet through advances in areas such as cyberoptics and genetics. But ideological shifts and personality clashes cause their alliance to fracture.
Writer Eric Stephenson, who is also the publisher of Image Comics and a music aficionado, has said The Beatles were one of the initial inspirations for the scientists of World Corp. You can see that inspiration in the title, of course, and in flashbacks in which one of the scientists, Emerson Strange, looks like John Lennon.
More important, the scientists, like The Beatles, are celebrities with an outsized influence on culture, which allows Stephenson and illustrator Nate Bellegarde to explore the love-hate relationship we have with our idols in the context of a richly complex, created world. (Jordie Bellaire is the colourist, and Steven Finch, who goes by the name Fonografiks, is the designer.)
The first chapter of , which collects the first six issues of the continuing series, is a good indicator of what lies ahead and what will be repeated motifs: flashbacks of the men in more idealistic days; excerpts from scientific journals and magazines that offer insights into their personalities; and present-day intrigues, including several humans dealing with the after-effects of being experimented on.
These people gain special abilities, but are unlikely to become typical superheroes. They don't have model good looks, and their powers seems incompatible with fighting crime.
