Shatter

by Michael Saenz

Yesterday's future returns in this sparkling archival collection of the world's first computerized comic book. In the day before tomorrow, all jobs are temporary, and control is in the hands of a few ruthless men. The world's biggest, most influential media syndicate has accidentally discovered a limitless source of cheap creative stealing people's brains out of their heads. Only one man can stop a temporary cop with a golden brain. A man on a mission whose mind is capable of absorbing the talents of others... permanently. A man named Sadr al-din Morales. His friends call him... SHATTER.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Cyberpunk

Paperback

First published July 26, 2006

About the author

Michael Sáenz is an actor, director, playwright and teaching artist in New York City. He earned a Masters degree from NYU’s Theatre Education program and has twelve years experience as a high school drama teacher, having taught both in New York City and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a teaching artist, he has worked in schools throughout New York City and New Jersey. In the summer of 2010 his play Möbius premiered at the New York International Fringe Theatre Festival.

Reviews

[D.M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

What total crap this book is, and I'm not referring to the hyper-pixelated computer-generated art. There's no mistaking the Blade Runner ripoff this book is, in fact it's made in a way that suggests the creators thought nobody else had seen the movie so wouldn't notice how blatantly they were lifting from it! The plot is...ugh...the plot is about a new 'drug' in this future-world: injectable RNA, which supposedly transfers one persons talent to another.
It makes me tired just writing about this.
The ONLY reason anyone would still own this book -- or at least the only reason I still own this book -- is because it was the first comic to be created entirely on a computer. The art and scripting were all done on the first version of the Macintosh. It's novel, and it was YEARS before other people tried doing anything like it, but none of that makes this a better comic. Like much of what came out of First Publishing, it's typical junk. I think it's time for me to get rid of this book.

[Burt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first graphic novel created on the Macintosh computer, it still tells a decent cyberpunk story, dealing with, believe it or not, art. And it was created on a Mac with 128K memory, no hard drive, and a 72dpi dot matrix printer. It looks so horribly quaint today, but think the mid-80's--no internet, no PhotoShop, no desktop publishing. Just MacPaint. this is a wonderful book.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth looking at for its role in creating comics history, but it absolutely has to be taken in that context. Read from a modern perspective, the art is poor, the dialogue is cliched, the plot is nonsensical. But there are some interesting ideas in it, and it's definitely a groundbreaking work.