A Familiar Face

“Year after year, our bodies became more and more optimized. But optimized how? It was impossible to say. Our cities had also been optimized, to the point of becoming meticulously tuned machines and extremely effective. But effective how? » Following in the footsteps of a George Orwell or Aldous Huxley, Michael DeForge describes in A Face familiar with a disturbing dystopia, a futuristic world where a form of dictatorship of technology. In this world, roads, cities, but also their inhabitants, are regularly "updated"; from one day to the next the buildings change shape and location, paths no longer lead to the same destinations, and human beings wake up with different faces, missing ribs or adding legs. The book follows more specifically a government employee (and narrator of the book), who works at complaints department; its only role is to read them, not to contribute any answer, nor solution, as if the simple act of staring at a screen meant that " "Someone is taking care of it." The day after an optimization, the partner of the employee disappeared without a trace – did she leave voluntarily, or was it a victim of optimization? Looking for a sign, in a strange atmosphere of paranoia, what the narrator discovers is that something On the other hand, there is still some anger, some indignation in this soulless world, and let anger rage… Michael DeForge excels in describing universes in the confusing internal logic, and its description of an outrageously efficient, dehumanized, chilling as much as it stimulates the mind, as a warning devoid of moralism. DeForge's organic trait, his his tangy color palette and his sense of humor complete this story. which navigates between pure science fiction story and political pamphlet. Freedom with which the Canadian author approaches the drawing should not deceive anyone: DeForge is an outstanding storyteller, and arguably one of the best things that have arrived in comics during this last decade.