What would happen if scientists were able to modify human beings using either genetic manipulation or cybernetics? How would those discoveries be utilized?
- Zak Edwards on Transhuman #1 - the old adage by Stan Lee: "With great power comes great responsibility"; but with great power also comes inhumanity; the horrific evolutionary leap beyond anything that is recognizable as human. Did it begin in 1982 with Moore's Marvelman (or Miracleman, after the copyright change)? It's certainly already starting to bloom in 1986, in the midst of Watchmen's thatcherite political noir in the character of Doctor Manhattan, the "inhuman" superbeing whose actions we cannot understand; and it's full blown in Morrison's Overman from Animal Man #23 (1990, pictured above), Zenith and The Invisibles, (1987 and 1994 respectively), the visionary mixing of Lovecraft, Crowley and The Illuminatus Trilogy with posthuman themes of evolutionary change. It's certainly continued strong in Ellis's The Authority, Black Summer, No Hero, and Millar's Wanted, Ultimates & War Heroes, even if it's toned down in favor of wide-screen death & entrails action and pseudo-political commentary on vigilantism. But what's interesting about this development is its connection with the old 20th century motifs of supernatural horror. In Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman (the new "mock-comicumentary" (?) about, well, transhumanism in the future) the "new humans" are revealed as enhanced chimpanzees who will take over the earth from us regular humans; an ironic twist which, in one image, ends and renews the central theme of supernatural horror: in the new millenium it's not the dark abyss of racial devolution that scares us, but the dawn of the new gods, who might not be human at all; the radiant singularity of technological progress. But I mean, who knows, after the next ice age (to come back to the Captain Marvel family), it could be rats who evolve past us, as in Shazam #21 (vol.3, 1975)
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