Gregory Suicide

by Eric Grissom, Will Perkins IV (Illustrator)

Obsolete AI program Gregory wakes in a newly cloned body to a world now unfamiliar to him and is haunted by the memories of his past lives, each one ending in death by his own hand. On the path to discovering the truth about himself, Gregory slips into the trenches of two opposing forces who want to exploit him. In the end, he must take down an AI revolution before it wipes out humanity, and the key to doing so may only lie in the strange visions he has between life and death.    • A Dark Horse Original takes us into a frightening future    • Explore the dark possibilities of human cloning    • Contains bonus sketches, designs, and commentary from the creators

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 5, 2017

About the author

Eric Grissom's work includes the middle-grade fantasy graphic novel series GOBLIN with artist Will Perkins, the interactive middle-grade novel ON THE ISLAND OF THE MAD MAGICIAN, the strange mystery graphic novel DEADHORSE with artists Phil Sloan, David Halvorson, and Marissa Louise, and the mature graphic novella ANIMALS with artist Claire Connelly. Additionally, Eric is the author of the tabletop RPG BEWARE THE DARK SISTERHOOD.

Eric lives in New Jersey with his wife, three children, two dogs, and several Halloween animatronics in various states of repair.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like I was watching the third act of a movie. What was here wasn't bad, but it had no context. Nor did it give me a side to root for without any history of this world. A clone or A.I. (That part is never really explained.) wakes up after 30 years and goes looking for its creator. Meanwhile the company the creator worked for now has clones all over the world. There's a bigger plot here but it's all the action parts of a movie without the parts explaining what is going on. The art and coloring uses a monochrome style with each page being in shades of the same color.

Received an advance copy from Dark Horse and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

[Dan Malakin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The problem with writing books about AI is that almost every situation has been done before. The robots will rise, and it’s not just our jobs they’re after. Such is the case with Gregory Suicide, a fast-paced, action movie of a graphic novel.

It’s not that GS is bad. Far from it – the artwork is crisp, the pink and brown colouring suitably dystopian, with a hint of cyber punk, the dialogue is sharp and funny and wouldn’t feel out of place in the latest SF blockbuster. The problem is it’s 90% plot. And when something is so heavily reliant on the plot it needs to do something original, surprising, or preferably both. Here's where GS falls down.

Reading it, I had the nagging sensation that I’d seen it all before, and knew where it was going. I was never fully engaged. So, if you’re looking for a fun, frantic read, with a hard SF edge (it never backed away from delving into the tech), then you’ll probably love this. For me, while I enjoyed it in the moment, I found it too easy to put down.

[Cale · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a fair bit of time spent in this book focusing on the philosophy of mind behind an AI and its descendant generations. But for all that time spent considering what makes Gregory unique, it doesn't really play into the plot all that much - either that or I just completely misinterpreted the ending. Instead, we've got a fairly by-the-numbers story about a rebel cell taking down the big bad, which was in the midst of its own internal coup. There are some decent action beats, but the artwork was a bit over-reliant on color washes instead of realistic coloring, and that washed out most of the story too. It's not bad, by any means, but it's not something I'm going to remember more than a day or two after reading.

[Lauren (WesterDrumlins) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art style and colour choices were brilliant, and parts of the plot were unexpected for me. I enjoyed this more than I expected to and loved the range of characters

[Etienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

So close to greatness! The art was awesome. The variation of colors between scenes and the few color use in a scene was really doing a nice job. The characters were also great, so was the universe. The problem I had reading it was the narrative. We jump in totally out of context, drop in from sky high without parachute, and some transition were not doing it, we almost felt like jumping around, like the storyboard was good, with all the idea they want to talk about and touch, but when the time came to put it all together, well, it lack some polish, some edge were too rough. It's still a good comic, totally worth reading, but it could have become something quite impressive with some minor improvement!

[Aaron Ambrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh boy. AI powered clones in a near future police state - you know how this story is going to play out, right?

Except, no.

Neither dumb nor intellectual, this story staggers forward in survival mode and therefore defies expectation. It's rare in the comic book sphere - with all its familiar tropes - to find a story that is truly unpredictable. Even rarer not to explain everything, leaving elements open to nuance and interpretation. For example, the idea of teaching pain to humanize an android seems to be a crucial detail that's left ambiguous here.

It's not a knockout, but this story greatly exceeded what I thought I was in for.

[Ferhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit hard to catch on in the beginning but builds nicely into a story with some unexpected turns. Has some takes from other know stories / movies like Minority Report. Nice ending although main character’s end is somewhat “fortunate”.

Good read overall. Could make a movie or tv series easily as the tech is low and would be lots of rotation on visiting actors (as they would die as clones)

[Mee Too · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another AIs taking over the world book. The AIs telling us how shitty we humans are and that we all should die before we destroy the planet etc etc. and to be honest it’s not completely a lie, we are pretty shitty, but humans destroying a planet would be like fleas killing a wolly mammoth. Will we likely make the planet unlivable? Well obviously!! Duh.

[Devon Munn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this because it was recommended in a video by the YouTube channel Graphic Vandalism (who is also a close friend of mine. I get a lot of recs from him) and this was way more brief then I was expecting. Would have liked if it was fleshed out more

[Colleen M · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great idea for a book. I loved every bit of it. Very fast paced and exciting that I finished in a day. The art work is awesome. This is my second book I’ve read of Eric’s and it won’t be my last. He is one writer to keep an eye on.