Blade Runner 2019 (2019) #9-#12: Home Again Home Again (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Green and Johnson wrap up this series in a pretty efficient and logical manner.

Upon returning to Earth, Ash seeks out Wojciech, her former boss at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).  Wojciech has no leads on Selwyn, telling Ash that he's become a hermit.  

Following Wojciech's advice to hit the streets, Ash goes to the Tyrell Corporation, and I totally gasped when I saw that its headquarters was so dilapidated.  The building is so iconic that I found myself waiting impatiently for it to appear in "Blade Runner 2049," as if it couldn't be a Blade Runner movie without it.  

Between Tyrell's death in "Blade Runner" and the Blackout in 2022, Tyrell Corporation apparently collapsed.  Walking through the building, cannibals attack Ash.  She's saved by Dr. Fost, a scientist whose isolation has clearly driven him insane.  He introduces Ash to his "team," a group of rotting, undelivered Replicants sitting at a conference table.

My initial complaint about this development is that Fost appears to serve as a deus ex machina.  Beyond saving Ash, he just happened to have worked on the team that created Isobel, allowing Ash to build a connection with him.  Moreover, he also just so happens to have access to the Tyrell server, allowing Ash to get the locations of people who worked on the Isobel project.

That said, Green and Johnson don't make it that easy for Ash as Fost's information ultimately proves useless.  Before Ash can start tracking down the scientists, the LAPD arrests her.  Ash thinks that it's Wojciech who sold her down the river.  However, we learn in issue #11's introduction page (hi, pet peeve #2) that it was Selwyn.  Issue #10 ends with the Replicant Underground freeing Ash from the cruiser taking her to jail.  (It turns out Wojciech tipped off the Underground.)  Meanwhile, at his mountain-top retreat, Selwyn sends another version of Hythe after Ash.

Issue #11 begins with the Underground's leader Freysa explaining to Ash that the Underground mostly helps Off-Worlders on the run settle into new lives as they don't have the numbers for a revolution now that Tyrell Corporation ceased making Replicants.  A former combat medic, Freysa repairs Ash's back brace, which was damaged in her scuffle with the cannibals.  Ash panics when Freysa touches the brace, though it isn't clear to me if it's because of some unconscious revulsion to Replicants or something else.

Everything goes to hell when Hythe arrives, after one of the Underground members dimes out Ash.  (Hythe hilariously shoots the woman, who clearly thought that she was getting some reward.)  Three other Underground members sacrifice themselves so that Ash can escape with Freysa and Efraim, a young human boy for whom Freysa is a surrogate mother.  The scene of him wrapped in a blanket on Freysa's lap is heartbreaking, expressing just how fragile life is in this reality.

At Freysa's bolthole in the city, she informs Ash that Selwyn bought up the remains of the Tyrell Corporation and has been making the technically banned Nexus 8s for rich people.  Freysa wants Ash to stop him, horrified as she is by his Nexus 8s' lack of "light."  She sends Ash back to Tyrell's estate in Santa Barbara, where Ash encounters Selwyn and four Hythes.

Selwyn is clearly nuts in his rich-guy way, coming to confront Ash face-to-face over her breaking their contract.  In the ensuing gun fight, Ash takes out two Hythes before Selwyn disables her back brace, which, after all, Hythe herself installed.  

I was wondering how Ash would escape this jam, as she seemed to have backed herself into a pretty serious corner.  Though the answer is another deus ex machina, it's thankfully a fairly believable one.  Chloe and Isobel return, since Chloe knew that Ash would go after her father.  Chloe asks if he really intended to sell her to Tyrell, and he admits that he did, telling her that he regretted it every second of her disappearance.  Chloe hugs him...and then has Isobel break his neck.  So much for his belief that they could be a family again.  

Remaining Hythe A goes to kill Isobel, but Remaining Hythe B kills A before she can do so.  Like so many other Replicants, it turns out B wasn't as obedient as programmed.  In exchange for the house and anonymity, B lets them go and gives Ash the controls to her back brace.

Later, they all enjoy some noodles, and Ash declines to Chloe's offer to go with her and Isobel to Arcadia, realizing that she belongs on Earth.  Ash tells her that she won't be a Blade Runner anymore and says that Chloe can buy her a meal when she visits her on Arcadia.  In yet another heart-breaking moment, Chloe tells her that she'll never come, and Ash tells her to send a postcard anyway.  Oof.

The series ends with Ash in bed with Freysa, contemplating yet another new life and surrogate family ahead of her.

Final Thoughts:  Although this arc wasn't as strong as the previous two, it was still a solid ending to this part of Ash's story.  Green and Johnson did an amazing job putting us in this reality again, and I'm ecstatic that I've got other "Blade Runner" mini-series ahead of me.  Not only do I want to see what Ash decides to do with her life, I'm excited by the numerous stories that this reality has left to show us.

Also Read:  Blade Runner 2019 FCBD (2020) (August 26, 2020)

Blade Runner 2019 (2019) #5-#8: Off-World (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This arc is interesting, though less expansive and immersive than the first one.  

In 2026, a wheelchair-bound Ash is working as a mining-station administration while Cleo - posing as a boy named Rabbit - works as a fixer.  Not surprisingly, everything goes wrong when a group of Replicant rebels storm the station.  (Where would it be if they didn't?)

During the invasion, Ash and Rabbit are separated.  Rabbit's friend Padraic convinces the rebels not to kill Rabbit, and Rabbit gets all of them to Ramajuna, a trade-route nexus where you can buy whatever you want.  The rebels all opt to have their eyes - and, thus, serial numbers - removed, but Padraic refuses.  Instead, he accompanies Rabbit to the Hartawan, one of Rabbit's suppliers located on Ramajuna.  Rabbit asks the Hartawan to smuggle him and Padraic to Arcadia, the subject of a brochure that Rabbit has carried with him ever since Ash read it to him when they first fled Earth.

Meanwhile, Ash survives the attack on the station, though it's put her on the radar of Hythe, an aggressive Blade Runner.  She offers Ash a cybernetic brace if she helps her track down Rabbit.  Ash agrees (to use Hythe's resources to find Rabbit), and the pair are about a week behind Padraic and Rabbit.  Along the way, we learn that Hythe doesn't work for the police; corporations now hire most Blade Runners post-Blackout.  At the end of issue #7, we learn that she's working for Isobel.

Of course, Ash isn't stupid, so she doesn't fall for the claim that Isobel didn't really die at el Santuario.  But, she works with Hythe and Isobel to track down Rabbit.  Meanwhile, the Hartawan tells Rabbit to improve his look if he wants Arcadia to accept him.  Padraic tells him that he knows that she's a girl, and Chloe is reborn, as the Hartawan encouraged her to be.  At Ramajuna's transit station, Ash realizes that Rabbit would be going to Arcadia (because of the brochure), so she and Hythe head to the platform where that ship is departing.

When Ash IDs Chloe, Hythe puts a gun to her head.  Ash says that Isobel would never do what this Isobel is doing, and Hythe confirms that this Isobel is a new model, more devoted to her husband.  Padraic attacks Hythe, and Isobel screams for Chloe who emerges from the crowd.  Padraic is confused that Ash (or "Ms. Kady" as he knows her) is helping Hythe, who uses the distraction to kill him.  Before Hythe can kill Ash, Isobel kills her.  

Ash is surprised, and Isobel tells her that she's not there to take home Chloe.  Ash and Chloe embrace, and Isobel tells Ash that she still had all the same memories that the previous Isobel had.  Chloe is upset that Ash won't come with them to Arcadia, but Ash tells her that she has to return to Earth to make sure her father can never find her.

As I mentioned, this arc lacks the first one's ooomph.  For example, Green and Johnson never really explain Padraic's loyalty to Rabbit/Chloe, particularly his willingness to die for him/her.  It may just be because Rabbit was his only friend, but we only have hints at that.  That said, I was glad to see that Chloe wanted Ash to join them.  The arc starts with an angry Rabbit expressing an adolescent belief that he can live without Ash.  With her mother restored to her, Chloe seems to appreciate Ash for the surrogate mother that she was.

Going forward, Green and Johnson certainly plant some intriguing questions for the future.  First, I'm excited to explore post-Blackout Earth.  Second, I was surprised how extensively humanity had colonized the galaxy by 2026.  It feels more like a "Mass Effect" scenario, where we stumbled upon existing technology to help us do so.  I wouldn't mind them digging into that mystery at some point.

Blade Runner 2019 (2019) #1-#4: Welcome to Los Angeles (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Let me start by saying how thrilled I am to dive in the "Blade Runner" comics.  It's taken me this long because I (somehow) hadn't seen "Blade Runner 2049" yet.  I'm happy to say that I loved the sequel and was beyond excited knowing that I was sitting on these issues.  Let's begin, shall we?

Just like the movies, the comics largely stay focused on the stories at hand, giving us only tantalizing hints at the larger world's status quo.

Green and Johnson focus this series on Blade Runner Aahna "Ash" Ashina.  With fewer Replicants on the loose - an interesting framework for Deckard's efforts in the original "Blade Runner," which also takes place in 2019 - Ash's boss has her investigate the disappearance of tycoon and "philanthropist" Alexander Selwyn's wife and daughter.

Right off the bat, this arc's biggest contribution to the larger "Blade Runner" mythology is elaborating on the off-world colonies.  Green and Johnson make it clear that the colonies aren't just mines where Replicants work as slave labor, as Batty and his crew did in "Blade Runner."  They're where people go to live a better life.  For example, even though Ash's mother isn't wealthy, she moves to the colonies (without Ash) when she learns that Ash has a spine problem to make money for the treatment.  For the most part, though, it's clear that the wealthy benefit the most from the colonies, which immediately raises the question why Selwyn and his family are still on Earth.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though.  On Earth, Selwyn's wife and child - Isobel and Chloe - are moving through the Replicant Underground.  Along the way, we're introduced to the Underground, such as the Skin and the Blood, who are atoning for their work with the Tyrell Corporation by helping Replicants change their appearances so they can pass as humans.  By the end of issue #2, it's pretty clear that Chloe is a Replicant.

In issue #3, Green and Johnson show that this series is great not just because they're playing in the "Blade Runner" sandbox but because they know what the fuck they're doing while doing so.

After a mysterious party (i.e., the Replicant Underground) shoots Ash's spinner from the sky, she winds up hospitalized.  The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD, for the uninitiated) fires her for lying about her spine (whose weakness she hid with a motorized brace).  Moreover, Selwyn wants someone else on the case, likely because a conversation that he and Ash had spooked him that she's getting too close to the truth.  The question at this point is why he sent someone to find out the truth if he didn't want it uncovered in the first place?

Not surprisingly, the truth is tricky.  Not able to leave the case alone, Ash goes to the Tyrell Corporation to get more information on Chloe.  She's sent to see a Ms. Elo who unexpectedly hires her to find Chloe.  It turns out Isobel is the Replicant; Tyrell created her the previous year for Selwyn after the real Isobel died.  That said, Chloe isn't irrelevant.  Elo informs Ash that Chloe possesses a gene linked to increase longevity, so Isobel may have kidnapped her to find a way to extend her life.  Like Ash, I'm surprised how plausible that story is.

Ash's interactions with Elo show that Ash's hatred of the Tyrell Corporation is linked to the offer that Elo makes her here, to "fix" her.  Ash doesn't see herself as needing fixing, explaining why she despises Tyrell's efforts to create "perfect" humans.  

Now working for Elo, Ash shakes down a Replicant at a club who sends her to el Santuario, the same beach in Mexico - now a collection of narco-states - where Isobel is headed with Chloe.

Unsurprisingly, this arc ends brutally.  Selwyn tortures the Skin to get el Santuario's location and arrives with his good squad to grab Chloe.  Green and Johnson are great at not rushing the drama.  Before Selwyn arrives, Ash learned that he made a deal with Tyrell:  in exchange for giving Chloe to Tyrell, Tyrell would give him a stream of Isobels.  It's...gross.  When Ash asks Selwyn about it, he denies it, but Ash is clearly siding with the Replicants at this point.  

As Isobel tries to protect Chloe from the ensuing gunfight, Green and Johnson punch you in the heart as she remembers Chloe's childhood, like how her favorite socks have watermelons on them.  As a parent, these sorts of moments break me now.  Isobel is wounded as Ash gets Chloe in her spinner and sacrifices herself so that Ash can escape with Chloe.  Later, Ash tries to get the police to help, but they won't, and decides to take care of Chloe rather than see Tyrell make her a lab rat.  Chloe tells Ash that her mother mentioned a safe place, and it looks like we're going to the colonies!

Final Thoughts:  I can't believe how incredibly good this opening arc is.  Given how much I love "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner 2049," I'm beyond stoked that this series really matches their drama, intensity, and pathos.  I can't wait to see where we go from here.