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Series Reveal: Bootleg humans wreak havoc in new ComiXology Originals sci-fi series '.Self'
What if someone made a bootleg copy of your whole life, and then it showed up at your doorstep?
Imagine a piece of tech designed to preserve everything that makes you who you are, from your sense of humor to your memories. Now imagine someone hacked that tech, made bootleg copies of you, and sent those copies out into the world to pursue all the different life paths you didn't take. That's the hook at the heart of .Self (pronounced "dotSelf"), a new ComiXology Originals limited series from Eisner-nominated writer Christopher Sebela (Crowded, High Crimes), artist Cara McGee (Black Canary: Ignite), colorist Rebecca Nalty (Finger Guns), and letterer Aditya Bidikar (These Savage Shores).
The startlingly plausible new sci-fi series launches today on the digital comics service, and SYFY WIRE is pleased to reveal the series and offer an exclusive first look at what's in store.
.Self follows Natalie Winters, a woman living a very comfortable life in Seattle with a good job, a husband that she loves, and a robot vacuum that she treats like a pet. Because her husband is a proud early adopter of new tech, Natalie has an account with Postscript, a service designed to allow people a sense of closure after death by giving them an opportunity to preserve themselves for one last visit with loved ones. It's simple: You swallow a capsule, and Postscript starts automatically logging your social media presence, your memories, and pretty much everything else about you that will then be uploaded into a "Blank" body upon your death, giving you 48 hours of extra life to sort things out with family and friends.
But of course, making a digital replica of your entire self has some frightening implications, particularly if someone manages to hack your Postcript and uploaded it to torrent sites.
“In this new era of crypto and NFTs I wanted to explore the idea that even we ourselves are capable of being exploitable digital assets,” Sebela said in a statement. “In .Self, we play with the concept that you can see yourself in different bodies that have chosen to follow different paths and dreams you may have let go of over the course of your life either because the dream was silly, or you changed, or life just didn’t allow for it.”
Over the course of the five-issue series, .Self will explore what happens when Natalie's Postcript is not only hacked, but uploaded into the bodies of several different Blanks, all of whom begin arriving in her life without warning and wreaking havoc. In the exclusive preview pages below (watch for a little NSFW language), you can get just a taste of what that's like, as Natalie's narration tries to piece together exactly what's going on.
As you can see above, the first issue will feature Natalie reckoning with the strange reality of what happens when her Postscript is hacked. As the narrative expands, .Self will allow her to literally confront the paths she didn't take, as other versions of her create a reckoning with what might have been.
"I feel like it's so rare to see a woman in her thirties go through this sort of journey of self-discovery, learning new and surprising things about herself while also confronting some of her demons, so I'm thrilled to be a part of this series,” McGee said. “It also gave me a chance to draw the sort of stuff I haven't gotten to draw in any of my other published work, which was SUPER fun."
The sci-fi journey of .Self begins today, with the first issue now available on ComiXology. That issue and all subsequent issues will, like every ComiXology Originals release, be free to ComiXology Unlimited subscribers.
