Alienation

By Inés Estrada. Published by Fantagraphics. 

Softcover, 250 pages, Monochrome, 2019. 

Fossil fuels have become fossilized. Wildlife has been civilized to extinction. Corporations have colonized our lives. Elizabeth and Carlos are bored.

Drawn in hazy gray pencil and printed in blue pantone ink, this book is about Elizabeth, an exotic dancer in cyberspace, and Carlos, who was just fired from the last human-staffed oil rig, attempting to keep their romance alive. When they realize that their bodies are full of artificial organs and they live almost entirely online, they begin to question what being human actually means. Do our ancestral, or even animal, instincts eventually kick in, or are we transcending the limits of our bodies? Inés Estrada's new graphic novel introduces us to a powerfully exquisite and chilling near future that doesn't seem too far-fetched, where virtual reality affects our diets, sex lives, and nightly dreams.

"A witty and original sci-fi debut, Alienation is the graphic novel equivalent of the movie Her on acid." — Publishers Weekly

"It's a combination of dizzy glee at the incredible things technology can do and a grim, omnipresent awareness of pending disaster—a mix that Estrada gets spot-on." — NPR Books

"Estrada wields her considerable talents for psychedelia into this science fiction story that questions the true nature of reality and consciousness." — Comics Beat

"What makes Estrada's work so good has to do with the passion and enjoyment that is imbued in it. And her coloring is out of this world — humming with life." — Comics & Cola

"Alienation does what all the best dystopian stories do: it paints a bleak picture of the future to speculate about how fucked we are as a society." — Southwest Review