5 out of 5

Casual comments about child molestation?  Constant jokes about sex?  Insults describing bodily harm via backhoes?  Hey, whadya know, it’s Chuck Austen.

I kid, because Austen has gotten such a horrible rap, and yet he hasn’t been guilty of any grievance other popular writers haven’t also employed.  A combination of timing and several high-profile books with these eyebrow raising moments – before having a top-seller under his belt so that fans would say “that’s Austen!” with pride instead of derision – quickly derailed his possibilities (or interest in his possibilities) at Marvel or DC, and he’s since retreated to other avenues where his name might not automatically equally the blacklist.  Having read a good chunk of the man’s output, and having enjoyed a good chunk of it (and fine, I’m not a diehard X-Men or Superman fan, so it’s not like I cared if his treatment of those characters was “leftfield” or not), and having read some interviews, I think the overriding thing is that Chuck has a pretty lax approach to sex, and figures it makes the world go ’round for both men and women.  It’s not disrespectful as such in his eyes because, well, not-being-alone is sort of the endgame for many, whether or not it’s what they’re focusing on right now.  From that point of view, relationships are rather hilariously simplified into “I like you, you like me,” and / or “let’s swaddle genitals.”  Secondly, yes, if he thinks it serves the story, Chuck will unabashedly go full bore soap opera.  So you get cheeseball fluff moments like his romancing in X-Men, or his overwrought JLA run.  Not to get too defensive, but this is a flip-side of what Morrison thought to do by going back to Big Basics on his various runs from the early 00s.

Right?  So I’m fine with Chuck.  And for those detractors who shudder at the sight of his name, you’re missing out on some truly great stuff, such as Flywires.

The Flywire concept which grants the book its name isn’t necessarily groundbreaking: it’s a human network of sorts into which any and all can jack-in for any and all needs via their “flywire” wireless port installed in their neck early on.  But the title isn’t there to Wow you with this familiar near-future sci-fi concept; the title is there because this relationship is the source of the drama that unfolds.  Like any well-built fictional world, the technology is only one piece of something larger, and Chuck lays it out conversationally – the Aeon ship, traveling to some eventual destination, one which our leads were born and will die; the flying ships; the ‘central’ computer mind that runs things; ‘routers’ who filter and pass information from sender to recipient – setting up an environment which feels full and fleshed out because no one’s diverting things to justify every little minutiae to us.  Jargon is understood through context, and new technology can either be explained in the same way or details dropped via conversations between characters.

Ex-cop Fontaine is living a bummer life due to a friend Flywire.  This makes him something of an outcast, and there’s always the sense that he’s forgetting things…  Thoughts of this are interrupted when a blast erupts a wall in his apartment and he sees a kid being nabbed by a couple of thugs.  Cop instincts kick in and Fontaine rescues the kid, bumping into Jean on her hoverscooter during the escape and forcing her to allow the pair to hole up in her apartment for a bit.  She reluctantly becomes wrapped up in the adventure and mystery that follows, as Fontaine tries to unravel why people are constantly after this kid.

There are a few incredibly successful elements at play in Flywires.  First off is that Chuck doesn’t cheat with his tech.  Anyone can “see” what you’re accessing through your Flywire with the right resources, and initially, Fontaine is the only one not jacked into the network, so people are constantly on his tail as soon as anyone within eye- / earshot gives away details as to his location.  So while we pause in various safe places, things never settle down for too long before people’ve got to pick up and go once more.  Secondly: there are legitimate twists here.  Twists you don’t see coming, and that elevate this beyond a Blade Runner / Minority Report / Insert-reference-here knock-off.  Twists that won’t ruin the story for a re-read, which is a good sign of a solid tale in general.  Third: patience.  While the jibber-jabber between friends and enemies is a little one-liner heavy, Chuck knows how and when to punctuate the dialogue with a good panel of silence, or how to divert from revealing too much via an action sequence or believable conversational tangent.  It really is like witnessing an awesome action movie that isn’t limited in creativity by budget or effects; the story can be whatever Chuck wants and it feels like it is.  There are even some details here and there that never get much play but could, and that’s a whole other level of world-building that, well, makes you not want to leave the fiction.  Most importantly, though, there’s a building sense of darkness to the story which I appreciated.  If this was a movie, you can bet it couldn’t have gotten to the screen with its ending in tact.  Especially with the way our principles are being set up as heroes, it’s a surprising direction to take but one that absolutely makes sense for the story in retrospect, resulting in that rarity for any medium: something that’s truly satisfying from start to finish.

This is all without touching on the art of Matt Cossin.  Matt has the tough job of taking the text version of this world and make it look equally fleshed out.  Cossin succeeds at this task.  His style is fairly simple, not too flashy, but it’s also always clear and the sense of space is well defined.  The facial expression are the highlight: comic artists often depict characters over- or under-responding, but there was a pretty grand synchronicity between tone and image here that never caused that immersion-killing moment where you suddenly see the separation between art and words.

Also: there’s a car chase sequence late in the game that gave me an old-school edge-of-your-seat feeling.

Humanoids is hit and miss with its stuff, a lot of it maybe suffering in translation but a lot of it also coasting on its genre and not having the story to back it up.  Flywires is all killer; Austen might still be Austen but that doesn’t have to be a death sentence: it can also mean that you can trust that the book is exactly what he wanted it to be, which, for Flywires would seem to be damned good sci-fi.