Review: Beta
"Is he the light?"
"That I'm not sure of, but... he may be the darkness we need!"
Jones is a successful business owner; very rich, very comfortable and very corrupt. In his large, opulent office he falls asleep at his desk after drinking a glass of water. He is rudely awoken by a tall, sombre man in a military uniform, wearing a cape and brandishing a flaming sword.
The intruder grabs Jones by the throat and lifts him off the floor with superhuman strength. He tells Jones to confess all of his crimes to the police and to the media...or face judgement. The office bursts into flames.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the stranger - and the flames - vanish.... as if they never existed.
Hmmm.... Something in the water, maybe?
Jones is arrested. Ben - who bears a striking resemblance to the flaming sword wielder - witnesses this with satisfaction. A virtual reality chat with his friend Zoe, who is studying criminal psychology, offers insights into why a man like Jones would conjure up such images in his imagination... but what could cause such vivid hallucinations?
Beta by writer Damon Willson and artist Ariyibi Toluwase is a curious, high-tech psychological drama. Secret experiments and mysterious figures inhabit a world fifty years from now, in which technology has changed our relationship with reality. Ben and Zoe simply put on special visors to virtually inhabit each other's physical space. A young man made of blue light - VR avatar? hologram? - dissolves into pixels at the conclusion of a conversation.
Willson explores the dynamics of a world in which manipulation of people's perceptions is all too easy. It is not that far removed from the here and now: the internet and phone apps have long been the territory of those who like to hide their true faces. Any one of us can create an alter ego online: superhero or villain... Toluwase illustrates this with slick visuals, showing us a gleaming, futuristic society where glossy surfaces mask any number of hidden truths.
The fantastic is now commonplace, gadgets that work almost like magic... but of course there is always a dark side to too much power. Do good intentions guarantee that the use of such potent tools will not lead to disaster?
With so many questions left unanswered, and so many secrets still to be uncovered, only time will tell...
BETA on REM COMICS
Zak Webber
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