The Private Eye
Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martín (Illustrator), Muntsa Vicente (Colorist)
Everyone’s got their secrets. For most people, a bulk of those secrets have taken place online. More than likely you’re safe. As long as you hide behind the right screen names, or never rise to a level of importance that would interest someone capable of digging. What happens when not just your general activity, but every keystroke you’ve ever made is released with your name attached to it? You adopt a secret identity of course.
In a world without the internet, where privacy is prized above all, journalists are law enforcement and paparazzi are the most vile criminals in the all-seeing eye of their law. Created by Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin, with coloring by Muntsa Vicente, The Private Eye is a once only-digital, now hardcover-bound, horizontal masterpiece that examines the questionable ethics of our constant voyeuristic culture from a post-internet perspective. The average citizen’s use of masking and superhero-like costumes both mocks and celebrates the comics Martin copies for the characters of this graphic novel. It is rife with social commentary and meta examination in equal measure, telling a good story over preaching some moralistic nonsense about why we should or should not entrust all of our identities into an unsecure cloud of information. It’s hard to say what it would be like if this were written any earlier or later than it had been, when every passing day creates a new and horrifying dilemma for the human race to pretend doesn’t exist.
Enough cannot be said about the fascination and beauty of The Private Eye’s art. Every character is unique, down to the background nobodies that fill street corners behind the main characters. Every costume begs to be explained, further unraveling questions about identity and defining the strangers around you just going about their day. Of course there’s a hierarchy to the quality of alternate identities too. People with money can afford high-tech masks that turn on with the push of a button, while lower caste citizens have to rely on makeup-like latex masks that you can smell up close. Some object to any mask at all and others use a brushstroke of makeup across their eyes. The entire point to masking was to conceal identity, yet these false identities become assumed by the people interacting with them, and those assumptions can be leveraged. Every part of this book’s base construction was well thought out and played upon, it could only be the work of artists working with artists, tired of making comics for corporate monoliths.
The Private Eye’s actual story asks a lot of questions, but is uninterested in answering with some moral lecture about anything. Instead it tells a really remarkable story featuring a wide array of characters who have personal beliefs only ever glimpsed at. The cult of personality forming a revolution gets as much play as is necessary for you to understand their part in the plot. The private investigator unraveling the mystery of the book is just as mysterious himself, breaking off breadcrumbs of himself as the story progresses. Not because he wants to, but because it is forced of him, or revealed by someone else he has lost control of. The colorful pages of this book will play against my eyes any time I look through the superhero section of a library or bookstore and the last panel will pop into the back of my mind just as vividly every time.