THE BODY TRADE

A father with a troubled past searches for answers about his deceased child in writer Thompson and illustrator Jok’s gritty graphic novel.

In the not-so-distant future of 2031, amid a “cost-of-living crisis” that amplifies class divides in Florida, an ex-convict named Kim Krilicgrapples with the loss of his 5-year-old son, Charlie, who died in a mysterious disaster that Kim seems to have played an accidental role in. The story opens at Charlie’s funeral, where Kim is clearly unwanted. Already struggling to contain his rage over the tragedy, he reaches a breaking point when he sees that his son’s body is missing. In its place is an empty “burial pod” from a company called Bio-Mem, which, unbeknownst to Kim, offered to cover Charlie’s medical and funeral bills in exchange for his corpse. Thus begins Kim’s action-packed mission to find his son’s remains—even if it means that he’ll end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. Meanwhile, a romance brews between him and Reed Fisher, an agent at the company’s retail outpost who, plagued by a guilty conscience, tries to help Kim in his mission. From panel to panel, Jok’s full-color images evoke a hypermasculine, post-apocalyptic, lawless atmosphere marked by wreckage and decay—the highways stretch over what look like rivers of toxic waste, and skulls and machine guns appear in high contrast alongside cheeky hearts, flowers, and splashes of 1990s-esque blues and pinks. Despite the unique particulars of the plot, readers will find familiar elements of the post-apocalyptic genre lurking on every page, mostly in the form of archetypal characters; Kim, for one, is a classic antihero whom readers will root for from the start, despite his mysterious past and possible involvement in his son’s demise, and Bio-Mem’s Lead Broker, Ms. Wolfe, has a cool demeanor that masks a sociopathic thirst for money and power. Despite the familiarity, one will feel compelled to read on, eager to learn more about the grieving protagonist’s past.

A tale of vigilante justice with a satisfying blend of genre-specific predictability and intrigue.