“Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person action-RPG video game developed by CD Projekt RED, based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop role-playing game series designed by Mike Pondsmith. The game features a cyberpunk-like dystopian futuristic world in which technology coexists with a degenerate human society. ” kindly informs us Wikipedia.
And it's a derivative of this game that I want to talk to you about today: Cyberpunk 2077 – Trauma Team, a comic released in March 2021 in the Panini comics collection. The album includes episodes 1 to 4 of the game of the same name.
Taking place in the world of Night City, the megalopolis which is at the heart of this universe, the action gives the main role to Nadia. Nadia is a doctor for a private company called Trauma Team International. His role: as part of a team, answer calls from customers in distress and try to save them. A single objective: the customer and nothing else. But during a mission, his team is decimated. She nevertheless resumes work and another accident: her teammate dies. Strange relations are established between her client in very bad shape and she who must save him at all costs. I won't tell you the ending, that would be a shame.
Although the key, in my opinion, may not lie in the story itself, after all quite banal, but in the treatment that is made of it. And here we are dealing with a pure marvel!
Because even if the story is treated in a linear way, it is intertwined in several plots that criss-cross it and shed light on it: dialogue between Nadia and a shrink who questions her about her state of health after the death of her teammates (perhaps she really go back to work? ), flashback on the deadly ambush, on the few moments of happiness with the man of her life…
The character of Nadia is far from being treated superficially. In a yellow bubble (indicating by this color that she is in the shrink's office), she highlights her desire to help people. She signed up with the Trauma Team believing she could take on this role of good Samaritan and she finds herself saving anyone, even the worst crooks, under the pretext that he is the client! It repels her, she feels frustrated, bad about herself and the small gesture that puts her back in her boots is giving antibiotics to a sick child. She has no right! The poor can die.
All this is underpinned by a tense, muscular scenario. A few snippets of words, sentences, insults, orders... We're going to the essentials. No superfluous pathos. It must be said that the author is not at his first attempt. The American Cullen Bunn is best known for having worked on Marvel characters: Spiderman, Wolverine and especially Deadpool. I will not detail his entire CV. He is huge, just like his talent. A star also to Thomas Davier who translated the text into French.
And then… And then there is the image. The design is also nervous, cut. Lots of close-ups of eyes: haggard, cold, sore, sly. Golden casings rain down in a pool of blood, a narrow vignette wedged between two fight scenes. Diving and low angle of course. Close-up, distant shots. Alternately. Never as expected. History to remain exciting, to hook the reader. The color plays between cold and hot! Thus, in full page, this huge black building with the few lighted windows silhouetted against a stormy sky while at the entrance door, red and yellow splash a scene of hell, the characters there are microscopic, crushed, already wiped out. Miguel Valderrama, recently arrived in the world of comics, is the designer and Jason Wordie the master of colors.
A last word on the irreproachable quality of the printing on a fairly thick glossy paper and we can say that we have a valuable object and that to do without it would be a great shame!
Amazon - 16€ (paperback version)
