Uncanny Eye is a monthly blog that investigates the surreal elements of comics, games, and cinematic art that I find weird, memorable, repulsive, attractive, and visually effective.
Sixella: The Last Roots is the American debut of the English translated cyberpunk/biopunk science fiction story (originally published in 2020) by French artist and writer Janevsky. This version was published in three parts across the first three issues of the 2025 relaunch of Heavy Metal Magazine (#321-323). Throughout this weird and dreamlike feminine environment overgrown with tentacles and vines of penetrating datalink cables, Janevsky has colored this alien world in warm/cool tones of aphrodisiac pinks and blues, veiled intimate panels with low mood lighting, and textured each scene with delicate lines traced/inked by hand with the tip of his pen. The creator illustrates an organically decimated landscape and a deep cavernous subterranean cityscape populated by sharp mechanical insect-shaped life forms and a variety of angular extraterrestrial beings that contrasts with the sensual and voluptuous full figure of the main heroine of the story, Sixella. Caught in a plot of illegally exhuming and breeding endangered plantlife that has been systemically oppressed to the point of near extinction in order to engineer an environmental air quality that keeps people indoors/industrious and isolated/exploited, Sixella, a roguish underground botonist seems doubly caught in a polyamorous emotional/erotic relationship with Milo, her floating mechanical drone boyfriend who seems to connect with Sixella intuitively, and a red, full-bodied “39-type robot” named Iris who appears to specialize in male-to-female connecting sexual services in exchange for currency but remains unpaid from Sixella for their services. The drama of Sixella’s emotional/erotic jealous passions and active political danger that she throws herself into again and again and again is a character arc that I found strange to follow at first but grew on me as her journey developed from issue to issue.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners MADNESS (CEM) Volume 1 is the first tankobon in this new black and white manga style adaptation of the original net anime series in collaboration with award-winning Japanese manga artist, Inio Asano, to realistically develop the chaotic fan-favorite characters, Rebecca and her older brother Pilar, on their paths to becoming “edgerunners” in Night City. Set in the same world as the source material developed in Mike Pondsmith’s role playing game, and written by Bartosz Sztybor, who is the web anime’s screenwriter and also the author of the Dark Horse comic book adaptation of CD Project Red’s video game (also based on the tabletop game), Asano’s CEM presents readers with a slice of life story that follows a familiar set of mercenaries on the edges of society running as far away from the mega-corporations and political corruption as their stolen cars and biotech will take them. The most uncanny element I experienced in Asano’s new vision for this dystopian universe is how empathetic, fun-loving, pug-loving, carefree, and cozy I begin to see the violent world of Night City through Rebecca’s dark, maturing, and complex cybernetic eyes.
