Nilson, Schuler, and Pritchet’s Agent 1.22 is an admirable attempt to revitalize, or perhaps evolve, the CG comic book. Artistically, it’s a genuine artefact of computer art. Yet, it often feels like it’s trying to step out of its render art roots, with liberally applied layers of painterly after effects. The book’s scope is limited, almost claustrophobic, too, which is a bit disappointing, considering the medium. Agent 1.22’s illustrative choices are more provoking than its story, though that’s not to say the universe created doesn’t beckon one to wonder what lies outside the small collection of rooms used for much of the page count.
Agent 1.22 is a science-fiction comic with a focus on (often page-filling) action and (tastefully) framed teases of nudity. Issue #0 opens with a tour of the titular protagonist’s body as she awakens from a cryogenic sleep. A disembodied voice named Mnemosyne (the ship’s AI) narrates this awakening sequence for the reader, although the comic is perfectly readable via its visuals alone.
The page starts with a vertically stacked arrangement of horizontally oriented panels, beginning with the S.S. Mnemosyne flying through space. The following three panels depict the Agent, in bust shot, sleeping in her cryostasis pod – a cold blue light entombing her pale skin. The vantage zooms in over the following two frames, with the hue warming to a skin colour and the tendrils of frost on the glass pod receding.
Though Agent 1.22 holds an emotionless demeanor throughout her awakening, these frames are intercepted by small, red-tinted frames depicting a semi-truck, viewed from the first person. There is no background given as to these scenes in issue #0, other than that they are flashbacks that belong to the Agent, suggesting that there is more to the character than the dazzling display of combat prowess and athletics we are about to witness.
Strategic use of fog is used to cover Agent 1.22’s breasts as she emerges from the chamber on the following page, though closeups of her feet, neck, and arms are given, highlighting a unifying black seam that covers her body, along with a Matrix-style plug in the back of her neck. Robotic arms then begin assembling metallic shielding over parts to her skin via the black seam. We get to witness this equipping through Agent 1.22’s eyes, filtered through a hexagonal, teal-coloured grid.
Agent 1.22’s armour consists of a grey and black carbon-fiber weave plating, affixed together by metal buckles. A chest plate covers her breasts, with the underlying seam connecting to pieces covering her lateral muscles and back. A torso plate covers down to her pelvis, with a (curiously) placed opening at her navel. Thigh-high carbon fiber boots cover her legs, with metal hinges at the knees and metal studs on the soles, suggesting some sort of function, though this mechanism is never actually shown in operation. Her arms too are carbon fiber sleeves reaching all the way from the bicep to the wrist, while her hands remain free. Finally, a skirt flap hangs over her rear, and a metal ridgeline protecting her spine runs up her back. It’s hardly practical, but the skin shown via the many openings in the armour keep the unifying black weave in view, stressing the interchangeability of her equipment and keeping the tension between her machine and human parts in full view.
It’s a full three pages of touring the Agent’s body before we see the outside the ship again. As the Agent enters through the planet’s atmosphere via her shuttle, an electrical charge hits the hull in a dazzling double page spread, showing that Shuler isn’t merely dedicated to showing off his lead character, but the fantastic side of this sci-fi universe too, with pink lightening ripping through the grey hull of the multi-winged craft set against a toxic orange sky.
It’s here that the artist’s hand (in a sense) can first be noticed. While touchups did appear on the previous pages, the quality of render work and smart framing kept the focus on the CG visuals. The spacecraft being struck shows the first (nearly) seamless marriage of renders and post-effect work via the clouds, with padded brushstrokes of orange paint used to envelop the craft.
Narrative bubbles reduce in number when the Agent crash lands, stressing the eerie quiet of the outpost. Soon after disembarking, Agent 1.22 encounters (and disposes of) one of the colony’s infected inhabitants before the scene cuts to the antagonist, Miller, watching a debrief of the situation. Miller’s office overlooks a sprawling city with a celestial body orbiting low in the dusk sky, suggesting that this is not Earth. The attention paid to Miller’s rendering is notable too, with the green glow of her computer console indistinguishable as either a rendered or post-rendered effect. Special attention has been paid to her shoulder length hair as well, with no clipping visible in any of the frames.
When Agent 1.22 logs into the colony’s record system via her input plug, a tiered series of green and black vector renders tours readers through the data as the Agent interprets it. Like the first-person viewpoint during the equipping sequence, these vector renders are a spectacular use of the CG medium.
Issue #0 closes with a fight sequence between the Agent and a bipedal mech robot. The reader is given several peeks up Agent 1.22’s battle-skirt as she leaps and bends around the robot’s fire over the course of several pages, eventually disarming it via its own weaponry. Once she returns to the Mnemosyne (less one robotic hand) the Agent is put back into cryosleep. Upon catching her reflection in the hull of a med-bot, she then speaks for the first time in the book, asking, “Who am I?”
Issue #0 is a great introduction to the world of Agent 1.22, and a dazzling display of Shuler’s balance between render art and digital illustration. Pritchett’s lettering too has been perfectly curated amongst the frames, and Mnemosyne’s narration takes the reader along for the ride without giving too much away, drawing them in to the next issue.
Curiously, the proceeding four issues of Agent 1.22 are far more claustrophobic, and less awe-inspiring than issue #0, even with the same formula balancing action, story, and eye-candy.
Issue #1 opens with a proposal scene between lovebirds Matt and Lindsay(Agent 1.22). The pair are in a sunlit park, with Matt on one knee asking for Lindsay’s hand in marriage. It’s a startling contrast to not only the attire and setting of issue #0, but to the actual render format. The backdrop here looks like a flat 2D image, and Matt and Lindsay are post-edited with so much digital brushwork that the whole scene looks artificial. While Agent 1.22 is a CG comic, the previous issue showed Shuler’s aptitude for creative framing and render methods, playing into the sleekness of the medium. This break in artistic tone communicates the scene’s artificiality, using render art in such a way as to make it look fake. Turning the page, it is revealed that Matt, now a cyborg, was having a nightmare.
The notable traces of digital brushes are still evident from this point forward, with characters radiating a distinct glow, though often to a less exaggerated degree than the proposal scene. When we get vantage of the Agent again, she is on her way to Phobos to retrieve the Vulcan device – an ark containing the research for Project Vulcan which seems to have unleashed a plague upon the research base.
Brushstrokes, and perhaps colour-burn, are used to illuminate the Agent’s face with the blue glow of her computer as she is debriefed on the mission via hologram. Her arrival on Phobos is followed by a lengthy fight scene, choreographed with tilted and scattered frames overlaying full page spreads as she breaks through the base’s security forces. Green-tone vector-style renders appear again as the Agent’s aerial drones guard the complex, giving her direct video feed from above.
The book concludes with another flashback of the car accident that preceded Lindsay’s amnesia and cyborg transformation. The two different Lindsay models are rendered atop one another, arms detached, before the book ends on a cliffhanger with Miller’s mercenaries boarding the Mnemosyne.
Issue #2 utilizes tactful lighting touchups in the opening pages, bringing back a sharpness to the images after the fuzzy lighting seen in issue #1. Prevalent use of blue tones and red accents score the internal espionage discussed by Matt and his assistant, Rae, for several pages before cutting back to an amputated (and nude) Agent 1.22 surrounded by intruders. Conversely, the Agent’s combat sequence is drenched in red, contrasting Matt’s cerebral game with the Agent’s physical combat.
Lindsay fights in the nude for several pages, with strategically placed limbs and crossed legs keeping the action PG-13. While it’s nice seeing Agent 1.22’s cybernetic body in action, her opponents this time around are significantly less inspired in their design than the robots and security forces fought prior, looking like a lazily assembled set of goth-themed assets.
When a hulking mid-boss pins Agent 1.22 down, she is saved in a gorgeously bloody manner by her medbots, with a surgical laser cutting through the crowd and a drill pushing through a thug’s skull, drenching the Agent in blood. The blood here looks mostly the result of post-effect brushwork, though some certainly looks like a rendered texture.
While the medbots work to refasten Agent 1.22 a new arm, the mercenary pilot Nixon and his muscle, Kat, make plans to invade the ship and take Lindsay out once and for all. The issue ends with a great titled angle showing the wall separating Kat, a formidably sized fighter with a partially shaved head, combat boots, and scars adoring her torso, with the Agent (now dressed in a white gown) and her new combat arm, waiting on the other side. Again, the design of the mercs leaves something to be desired, but the Agent’s new arm (a claw-like appendage) looks absolutely menacing.
Issue #3 opens with more back-door planning by Matt before switching back to Agent 1.22 as the med bay is stormed by Kat and her mercenaries. The hexagon overlay to connote the Agent’s viewpoint returns as she is beaten into near unconsciousness by Kat, but if comparing the action sequences and framing methods in issue #0 to issue #3, the creativity of these fights has diminished substantially. Shuler still frames the action in a readable manner, but aside from the addition of Agent 1.22’s new claw arm, the hand-to-hand combat here is less exciting than her cyborg athletics shown off while fighting the bipedal mech, or even the security forces on Phobos. Blood smudges are applied haphazardly, clearly being a layered after effect, creating a jarring juxtaposition with the render art.
There are a few standout frames, including a blur effect added to the Agent’s new appendage when she right-hooks one of the thugs, or her medbot ally’s whirling buzz saw. Fire and electricity effects too look good, spicing up the otherwise stagnant action that takes up the first half of the book.
The action pauses for two pages as Matt approaches the Mnemosyne. In comparison to the Agent’s harshly angled ship with rust-brown interiors, Matt’s craft features smoothed, curved surfaces, evocative of Y2K aesthetics – a nostalgic example of retro render style.
After another few pages of fighting, ending with Kat getting KO’d, another flashback frame of the car crash brings the story back into focus. Issue #3 is a bit too heavy on the action and sadly is just not up to the caliber of previous issues. Nilson’s hook ending does achieve its job of getting the reader hyped for the final issue, however, with a full-page render of Agent 1.22 donning a gun holster with a teddy bear hanging off the side as she prepares to take back her ship.
Issue #4’s cover depicts the Agent in her combat suit, complete with a large mechanical pistol on her side, wires affixed to her back, and a wireframe hologram of her teddy bear in the foreground. She looks out with an innocent curiosity, perfectly juxtaposing her lethal programming against the infantilizing effects of her induced amnesia.
The issue starts off strong, with a pair of radical heat-signature renders from Mnemosyne’s perspective as the Agent runs down the ship’s corridors. She pauses, shedding a tear as she speaks, stating, “Questions,” to which her medbot companion replies they will answer after the Agent has taken back the ship.
Her medbot is damaged during this sprint, prompting the Agent to grab hold of them and dive through a closing door, with the Agent’s foot hanging just outside the frame as she slips through, carrying her robot companion to safety. Meanwhile, Matt ejects Nixon into space, and the frost effect that envelopes him is beautifully done, again making it hard to tell whether the frost is a layer effect or a genuine render.
The Agent and Kat meet for a final showdown, and the Agent begins feeding Kat punches with her non-claw hand, stopping just before the final blow. Lindsay is taken back to stasis by her medbot crew, with Matt coming in to see her just as she falls back asleep. He overrides the ghost protocol, restoring her memory for when she awakens next.
The epilogue shows Rae learning all about Linday and Matt’s history via hologram before the final page surprise of an explosion erupting through a building – presumably the one Rae was in. This final frame not only keeps the door for a sequel open but is a breath of fresh air after such a claustrophobic marathon of metal corridors.
And, ultimately, this claustrophobia is what is so disappointing about Agent 1.22 after such a promising issue #0. Though always easy to read, the over-reliance on post-effects, the redundant use of locations, and waning choreography deteriorate the series over its four-issue run. The fan service and tease of the Agent’s body (specifically her feet) rides the line of erotica, but never fully dives into it. In the preview issue, the render medium is used to great effect, but in subsequent issues, we see less of the world from the Agent’s viewpoint. Agent 1.22 doesn’t have the awe-inspiring scale of Sinkha or the abrupt charm of Donna Matrix, but there are moments of brilliance in how it embraces the render medium. As of this writing, a video game is in the works. Here’s hoping the project leans into its pre-rendered style, but regardless, it will be great to see the Agent back in action, memories in-tact.