William Gibson's Archangel Graphic Novel

by William Gibson, Butch Guice (Illustrator), Michael St. John Smith, Alejandro Barrionuevo (Illustrator), Wagner Reis (Illustrator)

Overview

Science-fiction superstar William Gibson’s first graphic novel! The political leaders of 2016 have destroyed the world. Now they want a bright new reality to corrupt.

To do it, they'll abuse the power of humanity's last hope: the Splitter, a colossal machine that will allow them to travel back into the past to entrench their hold on the future. With his characteristic grim sarcasm and militaristic pragmatism, Gibson leads us from the toxic environs of the present to war-torn 1945 Berlin, where RAF officer Naomi Givens will persevere against inconceivable, ruthless future forces, with the fates of epochs at stake.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631408755
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	224,930
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

William Gibson is an American and Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were bleak, noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson notably coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982) and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature after it had fallen largely into insignificance in the 1970s.

Hailed by Steven Poole of The Guardian in 1999 as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades" in terms of influence, Gibson first achieved critical recognition with his debut novel, Neuromancer. The novel won three major science fiction awards

Hometown:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Date of Birth:

March 17, 1948

Place of Birth:

Conway, South Carolina

Education:

B.A., University of British Columbia, 1977

Editorial Reviews

10/09/2017
SF grandmaster Gibson (The Peripheral) mines the rich pseudoscience mythology surrounding World War II, or “The Weird War,” in his Eisner-nominated first comic foray, cowritten with Smith. In an alternate 2016, corrupt U.S. political leaders rule a radioactive Earth decimated by suspicious nuclear blasts. They escape to a different past via the Splitter—a colossal machine that has manufactured a duplicate reality—to change a pivotal moment in human history and secure their own power in a shiny new world. A resistance organization sends back their own soldier to 1945 Berlin, and he gains allies and dodges bullets as he is hunted in their race to preserve this timeline and its people. The artwork by Guice and his collaborators successfully juxtaposes futuristic technology that zips and zaps in bright neon with an old-school 1940s palette that evokes wartime cloak-and-dagger exploits. Although not unpredictable, this engaging SF conspiracy thriller is a worthwhile addition to the time-travel and alternative history genres. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"This is a comic that fires on all cylinders...It's spectacular." —Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net, reviewing issue #1

"This is Gibsons first direct foray into the comic book world and he has translated his undoubted skill as a storyteller from that of his novels to this new format/style seamlessly, creating what I now regard (after reading the story for a third time) is a MUST read for any science fiction fan." –John Patterson, Big Comic Page

"If you're a fan of alternate history stories like The Man in the High Castle, you should definitely keep Archangel on your radar." –David Pepose, Newsarama

“This is a moment in comic book history–a major event. One of the most important Science Fiction writers of the modern era enters the comic book field with a strong and fascinating story.” –ComicWow!


 

From the Publisher

11/01/2017
Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Award-winning sf novelist Gibson (Neuromancer) makes his first foray into comics with this tale combining the intrigue of a World War II spy thriller with thought-provoking, unabashedly political sf. When the RAF's Naomi Givens is called away from her normal duties maneuvering between her own government, the U.S. military, and the Russians in 1945 Berlin in order to investigate a possible UFO crash, she's drawn into a war among agents from a future, authoritarian United States hoping to rewrite history to their own advantage. While a few different illustrators grace these pages, they share a gritty sensibility and ability to capture scenes of World War II devastation and futuristic, far-out design, weaving back and forth in time as the action escalates quickly. Soon a cast that includes heroic soldiers, brutish villains, colorful smugglers, and a diminutive, hairless crime boss named Mr. Baby are all angling for the upper hand. VERDICT Gibson and cowriter/actor Smith present an intriguing and trippy spin on time-travel tales that is maybe a tad too fast paced, with readers never quite finding the time to unpack everything that is going on and what it all might mean.—TB

Library Journal

Read More