TERRORBYTES

An anthology of graphic shorts offers up chilling and sometimes-amusing examples of near-future tech gone awry.

The book collects the first five issues of Terrorbytes, with the first, third, and fifth written by Russell and drawn by Ruiz, Ponticelli, and Ferracci, respectively; the others are authored by London, with Ercolani or Halvorson providing art. The frame story opens on Earth about a century from now, with three android figures on a deserted planet activating old technology to reveal stories from the past. The first such tale, set in 2035, follows a charismatic tech bro named Ted pitching “Final Daze,” a new technology that allows the dying to relive their happiest memory, instead of living a painful present: “Let’s face it,” he tells a massive audience, “dying blows…But. It. Doesn’t. Have. To. Be. That. Way.” His exuberant presentation is intercut with grim glimpses of the disposable people used to test the tech. In the second story, someone named Tyler trains an artificial intelligence, sharing his personal data for money, only to develop a dependency that erodes his own grip on reality. A third tale follows a young man whose smart refrigerator informs him that he’s committed a crime; before he knows it, he’s sentenced and sent to jail. The fourth work also features tech entrepreneurs; this time, they have a bot that forces people to recite their thoughts. The fifth circles back to the spaceship that brought the initial androids, offering a haunting story of lost love at the end of the world. London and Russell seem to have drawn inspiration from the grim Netflix series Black Mirror, blending comedy with horror in technological futures that feel eerily plausible. The frame narrative feels rather thin until it gains clarity in the final section, but each story stands on its own as clever, unsettling, and fun. The various artists give each segment a distinct visual identity while maintaining cohesion in how they blend apocalyptic cyberpunk with the happy veneer of advertising; Ercolani’s bold colors and Ferracci’s surreal imagery, which features realistic-looking human heads attacked by scorpions, are especially hard to forget.

Sharp, unsettling tech satire elevated by varied and memorable illustrations.