The Private Eye #1

written by Brian K. Vaughan
art by Marcos Martin
with Muntsa Vicente

We live in an era in which privacy is a small virtue, in which openness about one's private life is considered a mark of honesty, and in which the details of our identity and our lives are kept online in virtual space.  Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente posit a future a few generations down the road in which that "cloud," that veil of security in a digital world, is eradicated.  The information cloud—not unlike the real estate bubble—has burst.  And vinyl records and public payphones have resurfaced.  Identity and privacy are supremely valued, and pseudonyms and disguises have correspondingly proliferated.

Enter our protagonist, a mostly illegal private eye/paparazzo tasked with uncovering the truth behind others' identities...for a price.  He takes the case of a beautiful young woman, Taj McGill, wanting to know just how much of her past others will be able to uncover, but in a surprise twist, one I can say with all honesty I had not anticipated, her past catches up with her, and she finds herself the victim of her former acquaintances, specifically a sketchy Frenchman suitably named De Guerre, a clever nod to the French term nom de guerre—i.e., a pseudonym—and his belligerent personality.

While I'm not overly fond of Martin's illustration style, which I find overly angular and unimpressively designed, there is no doubt that his unique vision of a future in which costume is both expression and disguise is delightfully variable, sadly untrue for his facial expressions which emote poorly.  It nevertheless has a look generally well suited to the story, and given the excellence of a few of his panels, I'm willing to grant some leeway for some of his more uninspiring pages.

Buy THE PRIVATE EYE at PanelSyndicate

Note:  Both Vaughan and Martin received a good chuckle in their Afterword:  "When I told Marcos I was thinking about a comic set in a futuristic U.S. that no longer used the internet, his first suggestion was that we should make the story exclusively available online.  This is what it's like collaborating with Marcos Martin."

[March 2013]