Posted in: Comics | Tagged: akira, anime, centralia 2050, cyberpunk, HRL, indie Comics, kickstarter, manga, michelle stanford

Indie Comic Spotlight: Centralia 2050 Vol. 1 – Manga-Styled Cyberpunk With A Compelling Lead

A woman named Midori wakes up in a huge city, Centralia, to a young girl calling her name. She follows the girl, but she finds herself pursued by robotic drones. She fights them off and meets a man named Grey. After some convincing, Grey agrees to help Midori find this girl.

Their search leads them through parks, rundown railways, and much of Centralia as a whole. They face opposition in the form of riots and muscle, and Midori learns the history of Centralia, including a major blackout two years prior that led to numerous people going missing. Then there's the organization Lumico, which took over the city afterwards.

Finally, the two meet a group called the Switch, who promise to help them if they agree to cooperate with this resistance group.

Like many anime and cyberpunk sci-fi tales, Centralia 2050, written and illustrated by Michelle Stanford, wears its Akira inspiration on its sleeve. That's by no means a bad thing; Akira is incredible and inspirational for a reason. However, I thought I'd go ahead and point that out.

Centralia takes a lot of tropes from its manga peers, including the slightly air-headed, impulsive, and very naïve Midori and the quiet, too-serious, and definitely hiding a personal tragedy Grey. There are some fairly clichéd moments, like when Midori is on the roof grabbing for a star while dangerously close to falling. It's symbolism is far from subtle, and it's kind of weird how this character setup has made weirdly specific moments like this into cliché unto itself.

The places where it diverts from these tropes is where Centralia shines. Unlike many female leads with these personality traits, Midori is far from helpless and can be quite the ass-kicker when needed. She is also the driving force of the plot, not needing to rely on anyone else's planning or decision-making to lead her about. As a result, those traits become charming quirks as opposed to reminders of the character's inadequacies. Midori is actually funny and charming. Midori is awesome, and she helps keep the story compelling.

Centralia is also capable of showing some restrained subtlety. It doesn't waste too much time establishing its setting and only tells you what you need to know. Cyberpunk dystopias and pseudo-dystopias are a common enough setting, so a lot of the elements can be taken as read. It also captures a feeling of isolation in a populated urban center being exacerbated by personal technology in a way that a million "people are slaves to their phones" memes could never accomplish.

I also dig how Centralia itself is something of a character in this story. Like Gotham, Metropolis, and New York, the chaos, quirks, and fluidity of the city are as much an actor in the story as Midori, Grey, and the Switch.

The Switch do add some nuance and flavor to the mix, as well. Ren is fun and interesting. Forrest is a warm father figure.

It would help the story if it showed some of the ways Lumico has done some visible harm in this first volume. Right now, you're just left to assume that they're pure evil because they are a tech megacorporation in a cyberpunk narrative, but that doesn't make for compelling evil. Don't get me wrong, megacorporations are insidious by design — but in the real world, I can look into the scummy things the likes of Disney and Time-Warner have done to know to hate them. It'd help if I had something similar for Lumico.

The art is a more textured take on the general manga art style. The characters are allowed to be expressive. They are distinct enough so that you could pick them out in a crowd. Kinetic motion is well displayed. The environments are given a lot of detail. Overall, it is a great-looking book.

Michelle Stanford has put together a promising comic with Centralia 2050. With some interesting plot elements and great leads, the comic manages to grab you and hold on despite its flaws.

Centralia 2050 has a website so that you can keep up with the goings on of the comic, and Stanford just finished a Kickstarter to help bring out this first volume to purchase.

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