Book / Week 30 – Far Sector (2021)
2024/10/02
FAR SECTOR
Written by N. K. Jemisin
Artist: Jamal Campbell
Letterer: Daron Bennett
Well, the time has come for the milestone 30th week, and I still haven’t been able to fully tackle The Watchmen since queuing it all those weeks ago. I love the book and wanted to re-read it again before writing about it, but its just so dense. Eighteen panels per double-page spread, and the supplementary material between each chapter. It’s not a book I can just breeze through, so I must once again put it off. I am almost done reading it though, currently on chapter eight. Expect it in the next week or two, or maybe I’ll add a buffer to break up the superhero genre. With all that said, we shall discuss Far Sector. Which I read on a beach.
Synopsis:
The first murder in 500 years. Twenty billion suspects. One hope.
The City Enduring, a booming metropolis at the edge of the universe, hasn’t experienced a violent crime in generations. The Emotion Exploit has erased its citizens’ full range of feelings, allowing three resident races to overlook their turbulent history and coexist peacefully—until now.
Rookie Green Lantern Sojourner “Jo” Mullein is still adjusting to her assignment to protect this strange world when a brutal murder rattles its social order, threatening to undo centuries of controversial progress. As the populace revolts against the legacy of the Emotion Exploit and leaders grapple for power under threat of a new war, Jo must rely on her unique instincts—as a Green Lantern and the only human in this sector—to solve the crime and guide the City Enduring toward a more promising future.
The first thing that caught my eye with this book was the DC’s Young Animal Imprint tag on the cover. I had to look it up and was surprised to see it was developed by Gerard Way, which I know from My Chemical Romance, and The Umbrella Academy books. I’m always intrigued when artists of other mediums stretch their muscles in a new way, and Gerard Way really caught me off guard with The Umbrella Academy and his books he wrote to supplement his band’s albums, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. And now to see his name pop up again in a DC book was another surprise.
The imprint’s name led me to think that this might be a Young Adult read (considering the YA initials are the same), but the imprint’s focus is to relaunch DC characters for mature readers outside of the mainline, with a more experimental approach. And while they haven’t released a lot of books, the Doom Patrol book by Gerard Way has piqued my interest. That said, I have Grant Morrisons’ Doom Patrol books in my insurmountable queue, and I can hear a little voice in my head opining that I should read those first before I order any new Doom patrol books.
The Far Sector story introduces us to Green Lantern, Sojourner Mullein, or “Jo”. She’s a new Lantern to the Corp herself and has been tasked to supervise a distant planet / megastructure, The City Enduring, and the three races. The races are the Nah, which are winged humanoids, the keh-Topli, which are plant-based humanoids that engage in consensual consumption of sentient species, and the @At, which are digital beings who can take a physical form using light projectors.
In the past, these three races lived on separate planets within the system but destroyed their words during a war. The Trilogy Council created a virus called the Emotion Exploit to tone down the population’s heightened emotions. They then created The City Enduring from the remains of the planets. And the billions of people have lived in relative peace ever since.
The downside of the Emotional Exploit is that it also limits creativity and therefor entertainment. Kind of like the movie Equilibrium.
Until a murder happens, and Jo is called in to investigate as the only living person on the planet who has had any experience with this sort of thing. The book then takes us on a wild conspiracy-filled ride where we find out the Trilogy Council is taking blockers for the Emotional Exploit. There is a large section of the populace that wants the exploit gone and this is resulting in violent protests. There is a large black market for Memes which are a form of currency in this world devoid of any other type of creativity. Turns out there is a factory owned by one of the Council members, whose purpose is to hold civilians, who have had the virus blocked, and are hooked up to computers and work at making memes and are rewarded based on how popular their creations on.
Issues like these have cropped up in the past, like killings, and these protests, and they’ve always been shut down and suppressed by the Council. But now that there is a virus blocker out in the wild, and the citizens are starting to feel their emotions again, suppression is no longer the answer. Jo helps to unravel the conspiracy and get to the bottom of the corruption which results is a complete turnover of the Council, and an Emotion Exploit referendum is allowed to proceed and voted to have it overturned. The population is now free to live their lives. To make mistakes. To feel. For better or worse.
The book is a great read. Truly deserving of the recognition. All the praise for the creative team.
N. K. Jemisin is a Hugo Award-winning author, a novelist outside of comics. And this world building and character creation experience they’ve brought to the table really shines through. The art by Jamal Campbell is also truly impressive. They took on the full illustration duties including colour, and the art is really expressive. Jo is a great, funny character, and we get a true sense of her inexperience in this new role in an unfamiliar territory, but also, we can feel her sense of justice, of doing what’s she knows to be right, and she knows she’s tough with the power of the Green Lantern ring; she won’t be bullied by the Trilogy Council.
Attempting to do the Jo character justice, here is some recent fan art.
Throughout October, I won’t be doing any fan art for any books as I’ll be busy participating in the annual Inktober. I will be posting those over in the Notes section everyday.
Also, I’ve decided to buffer superhero books with a completely different book in Bear Pirate Viking Queen.
That will be next, and then Week 32 can finally be The Watchmen.
Next read:
Book 31: Bear Pirate Viking Queen (Sean Lewis & Jonathan Marks Barravecchia)
Previous read:
Book 29: The Roman Stars Vol 1
Book 28: Fatale
Book 27: CHU Vol. 1-2
Book 26: The Hard Switch
Book 25: Phenomena - Book One: The Golden City of Eyes