Review: The Chronicles of Mary Jane: Post Apocalyptic Bounty Hunter
Mary Jane the Bounty Hunter wanders the Post Apocalyptic Wasteland seeking Justice, Vengeance, and Retribution. She was born into a world that was re-forged by atomic fire. No one remembers how or why judgment day started, only the remnants of earth’s lost civilizations can be found in its scorched ruins.
Written by Dan Gordon, art by Ted Lody, The Chronicles Of Mary Jane Post Apocalyptic Bounty Hunter opens with our heroine - athletic, buxom and sporting a bold magenta Mohican - driving her armoured car through the wasteland. Accompanied by her green-haired psychic side-kick Siobhan, they zero in on MJ's current target who is located somewhere within a walled-in compound called the Freehold of Folly.
A little Jedi mind trick gets them past the guard and then it's a descent into madness... Why is everyone wearing a Purge-reminiscent creepy clown mask? Where is the elusive Hendricks? It seems our fearless female must take the plunge into an even more frightening world than the one she already knows...
The influences are obvious enough, but this is a step up from Mad Max or even Tank Girl because it is more than just a gratuitous freak-show shoot-em-up with a futuristic setting, this story also delves into the high-tech and high-concept world of virtual reality and all of its associated philosophical questions. If you die in the dream, do you die in reality? Which version of you is the most authentic? Am I a butterfly or an emperor? And so on and so on ...
The virtual landscape (called Arcadia) certainly seems much more enticing than the radioactive ruins of humanity. But is this just an escape valve, a playground for the mind? Or is there some deeper purpose at play? MJ finds a mysterious friend in the makeshift Matrix, but who - or what - is he, and can he be trusted?
The style is bold and striking with Lody using a combination of 3D props and photographic elements to create a hyper-real feel to his art. Bold but not loud; colours are restrained and used to highlight changes of scenery: the predominantly red hell of the scorched Earth gives way to the chilling blue night-time nightmare of the dystopian Freehold, which is then abandoned for the queasy synthetic green digital dreamworld of Arcadia... Each new arena more threatening than the one before...
Both the story and the artistic style gives the reader the sensation of watching a film as much as reading a comic, the panels like freeze-frames from a sci-fi thriller. Author and artist as auteur, the cinematographic approach transports the audience in a unique way. Grab your popcorn as the director takes you on a journey into a flickering zone of dark imagination...
As dystopias go, this one seems to be a cut above. Not a bad place to get lost in if you don't mind strange, unsettling figures in the shadows on your trip into the unknown.
The Chronicles of Mary Jane: Post Apocalyptic Bounty Hunter - Issues 1-3 now available on Comixology
Zak Webber
Twitter - @sfcomicartist / Instagram - @sfcomicartist
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