Grip of the Kombinant
It is the future and there are robots! Also: Cyborgs, aliens, a maggot-person, and a whole lot of regular dumb-ass humans all caught up in a ridiculous nightmare of way-past-late-stage capitalism. This is seen through the constant conflicts between dueling cosmic megacorporations P.U.K. and X.I.T. to reach maximum profitability while not missing a chance to rub their dominance in the other’s face. We see this over the course of six stories that tackle a diversity of subjects from a “terrorist” takeover of a remote mining outpost, a robot “uprising” on Mars, one woman’s quest to find the truth behind P.U.K.’s maggot mascot Peerless Percy, a daring heist during an intercorporate summit on Mercury, and what happens when some aliens try to buy their dream home of Venus.
This comes to us from co-creators Simon Roy and Damon Gentry and is described on the back cover as the “unholy love child of Verhoven and Asimov.” I’m quoting it here because it really sums up this graphic novel’s demented appeal. You’ve got some outrageously over-the-top depictions of violence, a lot of (heavily implied) sexual situations and innuendo, and a take on the Three Laws of Robotics that’s pitch black in its implications as well as its comic execution. Even if this graphic novel is light on characterization, it’s filled with enough clever, wild, and downright demented ideas in its stories to make up for that.
There’s also no getting around the fact that Roy and Gentry are trying to speak to our presently confused times as well. Uncaring corporate officials, belligerently sanctimonious activists, overzealous police enforcers – they’re all here. What keeps “Grip of the Kombinant” from coming off as a graphic novel with a lesson to be learned is how it manages to be utterly ridiculous, funny, and dark without any of these aspects canceling out the other. It’s a wild, crazy vision of the future that we should be lucky to reach ourselves. You know, assuming we can get past where we are right now.