The world is dying, and the humans who still remain are not handling it very well. But the future may not be saved by them, but by something else. Your Major Spoilers review of Synthetics Volume One #1 awaits!

SYNTHETICS VOLUME ONE #1

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist: Tony Parker
Colorist: Carrie Strachan
Letterer: Steve Dutro
Editor: Philip R. Simon
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: October 29th, 2025

Previously in Synthetics Volume One: On a dying Earth filled with expanding dead zones, humans form rage gangs to vent their anger at futures lost or escape into the cyber-void to avoid thinking about what’s coming. Our only hope of survival rests with a new kind of human.

BAD MEMORIES

Synthetics Volume One #1 starts off in a cyber dreamscape. A man in a knight’s outfit is sitting outside what appears to be a portal to utopia. Elsewhere, a man is in one of Earth’s dead zones and is dying due to a suit malfunction. He’s suddenly in the dreamscape, being pulled into the portal. A call then awakens the knight. He’s a cop, and his partner is calling to inform him that they caught a break on a recent case, and he heads out. At a press conferenc,e the head of a company fields questions about the limbs they’ve been growing, during which she has a heated exchange with a blogger. The cops bust up a black market deal for memories that’s going down. Later on, the CEO has an argument with a peer whom she suspects is pushing her technology into unethical and illegal places.

CYBERPUNK MEETS THE APOCALYPSE

There’s typically a little bit of the post-apocalyptic genre in the cyberpunk genre, but it’s not as common to see both of these subgenres being so in the forefront like we see here in Synthetics Volume One #1. This setup generates some interesting questions within the fiction almost by default, for instance, how would humanity utilize hi-tech VR as escapism when faced with extinction, with the species nearing its end – is there a valid moral argument against transhumanism? In small ways, this comic does capture the essence of these questions and then pairs them with some solid dialogue to create a substantial drama. Where this issue doesn’t fully succeed is in establishing the stakes or threat in a visceral or meaningful way. The characters talk about things like dead zones and rage gangs, but we only get tiny snapshots of the potency of their danger, which makes it difficult to fully buy into them.

A CLEAN END OF THE WORLD

The thing that really stuck out to me with the visuals is how clean everything looked. In some scenes, this worked, like when the characters are in a lab, a press room, a police station, etc. But in the moments that take place in supposed toxic swaths of earth, or in sketchy parts of the city, it still looks very sterilized. This is another way that Synthetics Volume One #1 doesn’t do a great job in making the reader feel like the characters in this story are in peril. The glimpses at the cyberspace were intriguing, as it appears to be a mix between a sort of heaven-like place and space, and I hope there’s more of this to come with this series.

BOTTOM LINE: AN INTRIGUING STORY THAT’S LACKING TEETH

While the plot and dialogue are well-crafted here, the most interesting part of Synthetics Volume One #1 is the unspoken questions that it generates. Combining a post-apocalyptic world with cyberpunk sensibilities is a strong mixture that works well here. The problem is that a lot of the peril that this world has isn’t shown, but rather just spoken about in the abstract. This makes it a challenge to feel any kind of tension for the characters, which isn’t helped by an art style that lacks grit. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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