The Private Eye: The Cloudburst Edition by Brian K. Vaughan; illus Marcos Martin

The Private Eye: The Cloudburst Edition by Brian K. Vaughan; illus Marcos Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hardcover, 300 pages
Published December 17th 2015 by Image Comics
Source: egalley via Netgalley

This was fantastic. I won't lie, it's not Vaughan's best story but it's still really good and combined with the art I found it truly mesmerising. I was so hooked I stayed up very late reading the whole thing in one sitting. Private Eye is a mixture of genres, first and foremost I'd label it a detective, pulp, a private eye working a case. But this is not your normal PI; it's set a couple of generations in the future making the secondary genre science fiction. I loved the book for both these elements. It was a good case as the reluctant PI is pulled into a murder case and stumbles upon a maniacal murderous billionaire who won't stop at anything to change the world the way he sees it must to survive. On the other hand, it's a strange future I've never come across that is imagined her. One where personal identity and privacy is of utmost importance. The 4th amendment has become the most important civil right to the extreme that the government runs The Fourth Estate to make sure it is not violated at any and all costs. People wear costumes and use aliases to protect their identities. The internet is gone, two generations ago the cloud burst and everyone's search histories became public knowledge ruining families, careers and lives. There is no "online" and this future world is interesting. It is like the 80s in many respects where computer advances have devolved but other tech has been developed such as hover cars. The excitement of the case, the twists, the murders, etc keep you reading, but in the end, the book makes you think about the internet, personal privacy, who should have access to your info and while the bad guy here was evil, were his ideas bad. Should we live insular, cut off from the rest of the world to keep our privacy. Will this generation's use of the internet to spread every single piece of private secret detail of themselves (mostly through search history) one day blow up in our faces. If we, the human race, are all networked together, who should the controller be? Corporations? Governments? Which is scarier? Some very thought provoking stuff here which I've never really thought about to this degree. I found myself agreeing at some point with both arguments. A fast-paced read, exciting story that ends on a final note but also leaves some dangling threads for a possible sequel.