Slam the future-is-now warnings of Issac Asimov’s I, ROBOT and Alan Moore’s V FOR VENDETTA into one another, and the ensuing wreckage is a stellar piece of graphic fiction: THE SURROGATES, by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele.

Taking place in the year 2054, the speculative piece imagines an American civilization content with living through surrogates – namely, robotic doppelgängers of one’s self (or how you’d like to look) that can go to work for you, run errands for you, have sex for you, be you … all while you sit at home on your lazy ass and enjoy the data that streams back into your senses.

Besides getting fat, what could go wrong? Lots.

The trouble begins when two surrogates are “murdered” and police detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford – the grizzled old vet and the young pup, respectively – are assigned to get to the bottom of it. Their job gets a little easier when more surrogates are targeted, and the main suspect is a strangely clothed vigilante capable of dispatching enormous electrical charges with his hands.

Part mystery, part sci-fi and all excellent, THE SURROGATES delivers on so many levels. Venditti’s story raises numerous questions surrounding our increasingly tech-driven (and decreasingly personal) society, yet wraps it up in a narrative so full of suspense and action, it never gets preachy. Rather, it’s intoxicating. Weldele’s art is another high point – wholly unique and, ironically, its lo-fi look is a perfect match to the narrative.

Kudos also should be thrown the way of Bissel & Titus, who provide the book with an exceedingly sharp design. In indie publishing especiallly, packaging is everything in getting noticed, and this volume’s slickness no doubt has helped Top Shelf move more copies than it might have otherwise.

It deserves to move many, many more. I’ll stop just short of calling it classic among graphic novels like WATCHMEN, but it’s pretty close to that company. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.