Get a Sneak Peek of Archangel, the New Comic Book by Cyberpunk Author William Gibson

“The world is in ruins. The White House relo­cat­ed to the omi­nous-sound­ing Nation­al Emer­gency Fed­er­al Dis­trict in Mon­tana. They have tech­nol­o­gy that far out­strips our own.” A dystopi­an vision of the dis­tant future? Nope, a dystopi­an vision of Feb­ru­ary 2016 — the Feb­ru­ary 2016 of Archangel, a new com­ic-book series from actor-writer Michael St. John Smith, artist Butch Guice, and none oth­er than nov­el­ist William Gib­son, author of such sui gener­is works of sci­ence fic­tion, pil­lars of cyber­punk, or prophe­cies of the present as Neu­ro­mancer, All Tomor­row’s Par­ties, Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion, and most recent­ly The Periph­er­al, a pre­de­ces­sor, in a way, of Archangel’s sto­ry that plays out on more than one time­line.

“A father and son occu­py the new White House as Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Jonathan M. Gitlin. The younger over­lord of Amer­i­ca “has been sur­gi­cal­ly altered to resem­ble his grand­fa­ther, because Junior is about trav­el to an alter­nate Earth in 1945 to take grand­pa’s place, with the intent of remak­ing that world more to his lik­ing.” In response, “a pair of tat­tooed Marines go back in time to stop him, but things start to unrav­el when their stealth plane mate­ri­al­izes in a for­ma­tion of B‑17s in the skies above Berlin.” In that alter­nate 1945, “British intel­li­gence offi­cer Nao­mi Givens is tasked with find­ing out what just fell out of the skies of Berlin.” If you feel your curios­i­ty piqued — and how could­n’t you? — you can read through (above) pages of Archangel’s first issue, whose paper ver­sion quick­ly sold out. (You can also pur­chase the dig­i­tal one here.)

As the series goes on, it will sure­ly deliv­er more of the “alter­nate-his­to­ry/cross-worlds sto­ry” that Gib­son describes as “Band Of Broth­ers vs. Black­wa­ter,” not to men­tion plen­ty of hero­ics on the part of anoth­er one of his sig­na­ture pro­tag­o­nists, the “over-the-top female char­ac­ter who just nev­er gets killed.” Enthu­si­asts of both com­ic books and William Gib­son have long and patient­ly wait­ed for those worlds to col­lide, and they’ll pre­sum­ably wait a lit­tle less patient­ly for Archangel’s next issue, since its first one holds out enough promise to make them want to time-trav­el back to an alter­nate 1984, the year of Neu­ro­mancer’s pub­li­ca­tion, and get its author writ­ing comics right away.

via Ars Tech­ni­ca

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Gib­son Reads Neu­ro­mancer, His Cyber­punk-Defin­ing Nov­el (1994)

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

How Chris Marker’s Rad­i­cal Sci­Fi Film, La Jetée, Changed the Life of Cyber­punk Prophet, William Gib­son

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.