Tomorrow, Image Comics’ Surgeon X #1, given life by an all-star team of creators including Sara Kenney (Angels and Ghosts) and John Watkiss (Sandman, Conan, Deadman), hits newsstands and the web, following a dystopian future where we can no longer count on antibiotics to cure our illnesses and the chaos and unrest that results. With so much of the book’s story taking place in Britain, Image has called on the help English anatomist, broadcaster, and professor Alice Roberts to give readers guidance the details about where and how to delve into the tale.
As the professor notes, Surgeon X will be available to pick up at your local comic shop, for download at Comixology, and to pick up through Surgeon X‘s own enhanced app, available Wednesday at the App Store and Google Play.
Surgeon X #1, written by Sara Kenney with John Watkiss on art, is on sale this Wednesday from Image Comics.
From the official series description:
Extreme circumstances call for extreme medicine.
What if we lived in a world of antibiotic resistance and rationing, where the superbugs have won?
Sara Kenney, acclaimed documentary, factual drama and animation filmmaker (Angels and Ghosts) makes her comics debut with SURGEON X(Image Comics / color / over-sized / $3.99 / September 28, 2016) “Cutting Loose,” Part One. Joining Kenney are the all-star team of master artist John Watkiss (Sandman, Conan, Deadman), James Devlin, Jared K. Fletcher, and making her return to the medium she loves, editor Karen Berger, the award-winning founding editor of Vertigo.
Set against the backdrop of a medical apocalypse in near-future London, Kenney weaves a story of ordinary people from all walks of life striving to survive in a society constantly threatened by ever-looming disease and a government headed by the Lionheart Party.
It’s the year 2036 and there are great futuristic advancements available in medicine and surgery, yet a simple infection can kill. Rosa Scott, a brilliant and obsessive surgeon becomes Surgeon X, a vigilante doctor who uses experimental surgery and black market drugs to treat patients. As Surgeon X, Rosa develops a godlike-complex, deciding who will live and who will die. Risking everything to save lives, she believes that to survive in this compromised world her own moral code is the one she must follow, ultimately warping her Hippocratic Oath to suit her own decisions—even if it endangers those closest to her.
As Berger says, “[SURGEON X] explores the consequences of a world where the bedrock of modern medicine has crumbled, where people must adapt to a dangerous new reality, and where the lead character’s subversive nature makes us question our own sense of ethics and morality. Sara’s vision is frighteningly real and beautifully executed.”
The SURGEON X comic series is informed by hundreds of conversations with scientists, physicians, historians, economists, ethicists & philosophers to create this deeply disturbing, yet authentic future world.
SURGEON X was funded by a Society Award from Wellcome Trust, an independent global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. They support bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine.
SURGEON X is a unique and fast paced medical thriller full of politics and family drama that will keep you wanting more.