SOUL MACHINE

A story about big questions that lets readers determine the answers for themselves.

Sisters Chloe and Lacey, who have paper-white skin and dark hair, spin souls from a crop called breth. When their breth shipments start drying up, the powerful MCorp offers them a solution: Sign on as a franchisee and create their proprietary Digibreth. Chloe sneaks off to M-tropolis in search of answers. Anticorporate Lacey had called the city “a dump,” but Chloe is impressed at first. She’s bedazzled by MCorp’s charismatic leader, Maya, but when she gets in trouble, she’s rescued by members of the Nuspiritualist resistance group led by healer Persie. The efficient use of dialogue, especially on pages with large numbers of small panels, demonstrates the care Globerman puts into each composition. Determined to find her own path in life, Chloe eventually rejects both the self-proclaimed “girlboss” Maya and naturalist ideologue Persie. Her journey takes a particularly affecting turn during a dream sequence in which she navigates a surreal game show in search of her mother. The science behind breth and Digibreth is never fully explained, but the abstract metaphysics are a feature not a bug, inviting readers to interpret the story in ways that have “no wrong answers.” Globerman uses a strikingly different monochromatic palette for each setting, including greens, blues, pinks, and yellows, lending a distinct feel to each leg of Chloe’s (and readers’) journey.

Casts a critical philosophical eye on consumption and connection with visual panache.