When I was a teenager, and had, in some respects, graduated from the role-playing game education that was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk was one of the more popular of the games I moved on to, at least in my small gaming group. We liked the idea of a fantasy world that resembled the technology that we utilized. And, while technically a science fiction game, the concepts bound up in the setting were really far more fantastic that scientific. Today's comic is similar. It is, as the opening of the fantastic Max Headroom television series had it, set mere moments into the future, in a place that is eerily familiar, but populated by people who have become indistinguishable from the technology they use. The protagonist is more at home in the virtual environment of "The Playing Field" than real life, which metaphorically resonates for so many peoples' experiences nowadays, but the environment itself is still fantastical - what I mean by this is that it in no way resembles the virtual environments within which we interact now. This is perhaps where I'm going with the categorization of this comic, and the game I played, as fantasy - they're speculative pieces that, in a lot of ways, got it wrong. Speculation that doesn't jibe with reality equals fantasy?
Maybe. Or maybe it's late, I'm rambling, and it's time to say goodnight. Onward!
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