ABSTRACT

Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele's cyberpunk-detective comic book series The Surrogates depicts a society where people spend most of their lives piloting robotic surrogate bodies, but at the same time it interrogates technological advances by reflecting our existing world in which digital technology has become a central part of daily life. The social critique and technological interrogation are facilitated by a close analysis of the extended visual metaphors and a blurry art style that dominates the series that ultimately reflects the way we experience digital technology beyond merely vision. As a result, The Surrogates is centrally concerned with a posthumanist project of putting materiality back into the cybernetic picture all the while urging its readers to maintain an everyday openness to others as digital technologies reframe our relations to ourselves, each other, and the world.