basemondo:ourcomicsourselves:I.D. by Emma RíosHi, I’m Jacob...

basemondo:

ourcomicsourselves:

I.D. by Emma Ríos

Hi, I’m Jacob Shapiro and I run Fantom Comics in Washington, DC! I was asked to guest curate this page with comics from my personal collection that matter to me. My fourth post is on Spanish artist Emma Ríos’ book I.D.

Ríos broke into the mainstream North American comics scene in the late ‘00s with work for Boom! and Marvel, before teaming up with Kelly Sue DeConnick for the mythological Western Pretty Deadly that really put her on the map and allowed Emma to showcase her intricate, flowing storytelling style. She gives American comics an injection of European flair with a heavy dose of Japanese influence as well, and in 2015, she teamed up with Brandon Graham to co-create the Image Comics anthology magazine Island–each month featured a selection of comics by independent artists from around the globe, hand-picked by Ríos and Graham.

Along with curating and editing the magazine, the first two issues of Island serialized I.D., the first comic ever written and drawn entirely by Ríos alone. In short, it’s a story about identity. Three people from different walks of life who are unhappy with their lives for different reasons all want to get an experimental surgery to get their brain (and thus their mind and consciousness) transplanted into a new body.

This comic is a strain of near-future hard sci-fi we don’t see enough in comics–not about spaceships or explosions but just humans being humans, and the potential realistic real-world implications of that. Ríos researched with neurologist Miguel Alberte Woodward, MD to figure out the actual prospects of a surgery like this, and he wrote a short essay in the back of the book:

“What Emma requested were the technicalities behind the process of changing the carcass, while retaining the soul. Not a clean and elegant method where some nano-robots build a new nervous system from scratch by replicating the original one which you then have to figure out what to do with, but rather a complex surgery with a trade-off between leaving the comforts of home and making the strenuous journey of meeting one’s urge, however founded or powerful, to change body. Setting aside ‘personal’ reasons, there might be a handful of medical conditions where a brain transplant would be considered an option, should the technology be developed some day.”

All this scientific research is really just the base for creating an emotional interpersonal story. Obviously getting a completely new body is a huge life change, and each of the characters has complicated reasons for wanting the surgery. But for the most part, I.D. doesn’t take place in cold research labs or hospital rooms–it’s a relatable human story that opens in a coffee shop on a rainy day and ends on a park bench under a tree.

But even with Ríos’ super heady plot (literally!), my favorite part of I.D. is still hands-down her artwork. I.D. is printed not in color or black-and-white but entirely in redscale, which immediately makes this comic stand out. And like many of Emma’s other comics, her page layouts are absolutely stunning: tons of inset panels-within-panels and playing with panel shape, size, and the transition from panel gutters to selective use of full-bleed pages.

With a comics industry toying with the idea of moving entirely to smartphone- and tablet-based panel-by-panel view digital comic reading, a book like I.D. showcases the power of entire pages together being greater than the sum of their parts, something we might lose if we ever move past physical comics as a medium. The story opens with circular close-up panels of hands, mouths, coffee mugs, and uses this extreme close-up technique through the whole book to keep the comic feeling grounded in human emotion while it grasps with gigantic existential questions.

The cover to I.D. is mostly blank white with light red on it, so you might walk past it if you see it in a comic shop, but anyone with a passing interest in hard science fiction or the human condition should pick this up. Also check out the interview I did with Emma last year for the now-defunct comics site Panels (now hosted on Book Riot).

You can find Emma on Tumblr at @steinerfrommars. I’m on Tumblr at @aleneigen. and Fantom Comics is on Tumblr at @fantomcomics.

@aleneigen with another lovely review (I.D. was what got me to buy Island in the first place - a decision I will never forget)