In this review of Synthetics Volume One #2, Lieutenants Ellis and Holt dig deeper into the memory black market, while Dr. Montoya faces threats to expose his secret synthetics work.
Synthetics Volume One #2
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Art and Main Cover: Tony Parker
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: December 10, 2025
This review contains spoilers
Synthetics Volume One #2 opens up with Lieutenant Nick Ellis and his partner, Lieutenant Denny Holt, investigating some black market memory copying, leading them to the Vita Nova company and Dr. Hernando Montoya. They discuss the intricacies and legalities of growing human brains and encoding them with memories without causing a failure cascade. Montoya’s compliance with the officers is enough to get them to leave quickly and he’s able to talk to Yuri Yankovic, the man funding his secret human cloning project (the synthetics). These synthetics are meant to go out into the dead zones and repair the environment in order to save the human race, but they’re still more than a week from being ready to reveal.
Ellis and Holt are later caught in a rage gang flash riot. After they take out the rioters, we get an inner monologue from Ellis, explaining how the ragers are trying to escape humanity’s impending doom through violence. Holt leaves to meet up with other Barrens members who dance and party the night away as a means of escape. There’s a quick page showing journalist Blake Wohl and her bee drones threatening Dr. Montoya, as she wants exclusive rights to coverage of the synthetic births or she’ll go to the police with what she knows.
Synthetics Volume One #2 wraps up with Ellis visiting his sister, a Roomie. This lifestyle is another means of escape in which the person never leaves their house. It’s always day time, there’s no bad news, and the Roomie is basically living out an idyllic fantasy life, ignoring the end of the world. The final page gives us Ellis inside his neuralink suit, highlighting his form of escape from reality.
Analysis
J. Michael Straczynski packs a lot into Synthetics Volume One #2. Early on, there’s a lot of discussion about failure cascades and how fixing one problem leads to others. Later, he focuses on escaping reality. Both areas are interesting to think about because we experience them all the time. Throughout life, we have to deal with issues that arise and just when we think we’ve got a problem figured out, another one takes its place. How do we deal with that? By finding a means of escape from the real world such as social media, video games, music, or comic books, just to name a few. The bigger picture that Straczynski is trying to paint here could easily take up a series two or three times the length of this one (only four issues), so the story moves at a fast pace. It’s really a bit too fast, though, and I’d like to see the ideas explored in longer issues or stretched out in a longer series. Hopefully, we can get another volume or ongoing series after this one is wrapped up where the story might be more fleshed out.
Tony Parker’s illustrations in Synthetics Volume One #2 are excellent throughout the book. The pages and panels vary in the amount of detail, but the crisp linework makes the characters stand out. This, combined with Carrie Strachan’s coloring, gives us some memorable pages. The rage gang riot pages are filled with explosions and chaos. Through the use of warm tones and shadows, you get a sense of the danger that Ellis and Holt face. The single page where Blake Wohl threatens Dr. Montoya is mostly negative space shadows, making her feel all the more menacing. From that page, we jump to the bright, colorful indoor space of Connie’s Roomie home. It’s such a contrast from the preceding pages that it’s visually striking. Going from the dark, gloomy outside world to that bright space is unexpected and another good example of effective color use to help tell the story.
Final Thoughts
Synthetics Volume One #2 is a dense, but interesting, story that’s full of sci-fi action and drama. While it would be nice to have an expanded story to feel less compacted, this book is worth picking up, especially for fans of science fiction who enjoy an end of the world tale. Have fun, comic lovers!
