Review: Cyberforce
"We're going to die, all of us, the whole world... and I know when it happens."
Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Carin Taylor is running away from home. Literally running, very fast, pursued by heavily-armed cybernetic soldiers, leaving a trail of havoc in their wake as they race through the backstreets of Millennium City (formerly known as Pittsburgh). What makes it worse is that the soldiers work for her mother...
Carin's mom is chairwoman of Cyber Data Inc. which specialises in creating technologically-enhanced warriors, hired out to powerful multinational corporations that need someone to do their covert dirty work... So far, so morally ambiguous in a near-future America in which civilian government has faded away in the wake of private influence, but things go from bad to catastrophic when Carin stumbles upon the details of something called the 'Aphrodite Protocol'.
Her only hope is Morgan Stryker, former special ops cyber-soldier who used to work for CDI and has now gone to ground. Carin tracks down his former souped-up teammates, but they are not exactly pleased to see her...
Welcome to Cyberforce by writers Marc Silvestri and Matt Hawkins, with artists Khoi Pham and Marco Turini (Top Cow Productions). In this particular dystopia the environment and society has broken down and resources are scarce. Nations - what is left of them - are locked in perpetual cold wars. In this bleak, brutal future those in power wield control with a fist of steel, arrogant and narcissistic in their extreme visions. The end of the world seems to be unavoidable, but even that seems to be seen as an opportunity to seize an advantage.
Battling cyborgs, some totally human-looking, some much less so, shoot, stab and slice each other with a variety of sharp appendages and projectiles sprouting from their gold-plated augmentations. One character does manage to equip himself with three right arms at some point, which some people might find a little excessive... The line between man and machine is blurred beyond recognition. For some of of the enhanced, their humanity has all but vanished, leaving nothing behind but a lust for violence.
Fans of Aphrodite IX will be happy; the green-haired assassin makes an appearance in her legendary kick-ass style. This has lots of action, plus drama (Carin's family background is far from ordinary, to say the least) and a complex narrative that takes many bewildering turns but does not trip itself up. The artists excel at illustrating the many bouts of high-tech mano-a-mano with bursts of rapid energy burning up the page, plus more detailed panels in which the main characters are beautifully rendered with - ironically - human pathos.
As events begin to escalate out of control, Catrin and her super-powered friends come face to face with ever more savage creations from the secret laboratories of CDI.
Beneath the cold metallic shells, does enough human spirit remain to find a way out of the approaching darkness?
Zak Webber
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