I Feel MachIne

released 20 sepTeMber Publisher self Made Hero Writers/artists Krent able, box brown, Julian Hanshaw, erik svetoft, shaun Tan, Tillie Walden

Anthology The perils of tech underpin the six stories in this well-curated collection, which feels a little like an indie comics Black Mirror.

Box Brown’s “Uploading” imagines a world where people are uploaded to an archive when they die. It’s a simple idea, executed well and with a touch of dark ambiguity. Less subtle, but rather more freaky, is Krent Able’s “Bloody Kids”, a grim horror story with a cheeky sense of humour.

A taste for the surreal is present in both Erik Svetoft’s “#STHLM#TRANSFER” and Julian Hanshaw’s “Be Little With Me”. The latter is an amusingly weird tale of doppelgangers, chickens and a projector that opens portals to other realities, while the former channels Gilliamesque imagery into a cryptic story about the Social Media Security Force. Tillie Walden’s “Contours”, meanwhile, explores love in a post-device world; a little on-the-nose in its message, it still looks wonderful, rendered in red, black and blue swirls.

But the highlight is Shaun Tan’s story “Here I Am”. A beautifully told feminist fairytale about a young girl on a bizarre alien world and a boy’s misguided attempts to “rescue” her, it’s funny, sweet and genuinely heartwarming, with a touch of Studio Ghibli magic – a great all-ages tale that will leave you with a tear in your eye.