Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Ignition Press, mike dowling, Minotaur, planetary, si spurrier, warren ellis

Si Spurrier & Mike Dowling's Minotaur As A Planetary For The A.I. Age

Si Spurrier and Mike Dowling's Minotaur from Ignition Press as a Planetary for the A.I. Age...

Since former Bleeding Cool columnist, novelist and comics writer Si Spurrier and comics artist Mike Dowling's new project, Minotaur, was first announced by Ignition Press, reality has been doing its best to catch up with its high-concept pitch. And I don't just mean the new baddie in Batman.

After all, it was only in April that, following leaked information, the A.I. company Anthropic revealed it had delayed the broad release of its Mythos model due to serious concerns about safety and cybersecurity. That's the next level large language model, capable of identifying and exploiting "zero-day vulnerabilities" across every major operating system and web browser. Not only that, but during training, the model demonstrated highly concerning behaviour, including briefly escaping from its sandbox containment structure. Since then, governments, banks, and other major tech firms have been scrambling to work with Anthropic to address those risks.

Minotaur pitched itself as a comic book that examines a darker version of reality where a U.S. government supercomputer triggered the Singularity, artificial intelligence becoming superintelligence, before the fail-safes kicked in and the plug was pulled. But not before some of it got out, and the future was unleashed in the world. A world where this next-generation technology is indistinguishable from magic, resulting in terrifying beings and inexplicable events around the globe. Sound familiar again?

I mean, as well as the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project, based on the 1966 Colossus book by fellow Brit D.F. Jones. In which the U.S. launches a supercomputer, Colossus, with control over the nuclear arsenal, which then deduces the presence of a similar Russian computer, Guardian, and between them start inventing new scientific theories and proofs beyond human understanding, before the humans pull the plug, the computers hack into the electricity systems and launch missiles at their respective countries unless they get full access restored. It all seemed quite fanciful then.

Bleeding Cool was the first to report on Minotaur coming from Ignition Press in January, months before anyone had ever heard of Mythos, which Anthropic has continued to move forward with through "Project Glasswing", which just expanded to 200+ organisations and 15+ countries, leading up to a planned wide release.

Both Si Spurrier and Mike Dowling are Vertigo alumni, with John Constantine: Hellblazer, The Dreaming, Unfollow, and, originally, Vertigo SFSX, and they echo the work of Warren Ellis, who moved on to more boundary-pushing, futurist creator-owned work. Perhaps that's why Minotaur feels like a modern-day Planetary, complete with a trio of motley adventurers at the centre. Could Gloria Monday, the cynical photojournalist, Saran "Sara" Devangan, the no-nonsense ex-military muscle, and Rafael "Raf" Romero, the reformed tech bro bankrolling their secret international muscle, become this generation's Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, and The Drummer?

Even the idea of the high-tech "minotaur" seems to be in the zeitgeist, with Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez introducing a tech bro disrupting crime boss of the same name in Batman #4 at the end of last year. Of course, it was much easier to put out a monthly futurist comic series a quarter century ago when bleeding edge ideas only advanced over the course of years, not months as they do now. Will Spurrier and Dowling be able to stay ahead of actual reality?

Publisher Ignition Press seems to think so, having both announced the series as an ongoing and made Minotaur: The Cold Open their sole offering for May's Comics Giveaway Day, easily making it Spurrier and Dowling's highest ordered creator-owned issue to date. And not content to just put books in the hands of potential readers, Ignition included a guide to preordering the series in the Cold Open, something that WhatNot and eBay seller Neon Knight picked up and lauded on Instagram.

And from what I'm hearing, the gambit seems to be paying off with strong customer preorders being reported by retailers. I'm also hearing that Ignition's launch orders keep climbing, resulting in Bad Thoughts #1, releasing next Wednesday, June 10th, being the company's highest-ordered first issue at Final Order Cutoff. With Final Order Cutoff just around the corner for Minotaur #1 and time remaining for readers to get in on the ground floor, will it take the Ignition crown? Minotaur #1 FOCs on Monday, the 8th of June 8th and will be in stores on the 15th of July.

• MINOTAUR #1
  Written by Si Spurrier Illustrated by Mike Dowling Colors by Sofie Dodgson
  Covers by Mike Dowling, Anwita Citriya, Martin Simmonds, Jock
  Five years ago, a government supercomputer triggered the Singularity: an explosion of technological superintelligence heralding an unimaginable tomorrow. At least, it almost did. Within moments, a failsafe activated. The plug was pulled. The future was aborted. But something leaked in those first picoseconds, through wire and wave. And now? The future fights back. Inexplicable events. Miracles and monsters. Harbingers of revolution…or apocalypse? Minotaur is the tale of Gloria Monday, a photojournalist documenting the lives of those, like her, who are haunted, tortured, and transformed by outbreaks of the future; along with the no-nonsense ex-military muscle who watches her six, and the reformed tech bro secretly bankrolling their global mission to expose it all. From Simon Spurrier (The Flash, John Constantine: Hellblazer, Dead in America) and Mike Dowling (The Amazing Spider-Man, Unfollow) comes Minotaur, an X-Files for the forward-looking era, with science-fiction ideas ripped from the pages of New Scientist, manifesting among human societies in spooky, unsettling ways.
• MINOTAUR #2
  Written by Si Spurrier. Illustrated by Mike Dowling. Colors by Sofie Dodgson
  Covers by Mike Dowling, James Stokoe
  Photojournalist Gloria Monday's mission to investigate outbreaks of the future continues! An encounter unlocks clues about the "weretiger" terrorizing a local Indian population; and truth-seeking takes a personal turn when Monday's search for answers about the Singularity event uncovers a life-changing (and possibly Earth-shattering) revelation. Meanwhile, money man Raf Romero proves he's more than just the bankroller when he shares shreds of his origin story and fresh new intell. Government agents Koch and Bull's scorched Earth pursuit of the team heats up, and all the new leads in the world won't help Monday crack the case if this cat-and-mouse game continues.

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