A new sci-fi series combines the breakneck car combat of Mad Max with the cyberpunk dystopia of Blade Runner, as a lone ‘Road Warrior’ leads a revolution from behind the wheel.
New series The Last Driver takes place in a distant future where driving has been outlawed following the automatization of America’s roadways.
While the disenfranchised live in arid deserts, the wealthy ‘Money Barons’ luxuriate in cyberpunk cities, defended by a robotic police force and only challenged by a freedom fighter known only as Clutch.
The Last Driver Is Rebellious Sci-Fi from Batman: White Knight Creator
Recently, Image Comics announced new comic series The Last Driver, coming from writer-artist Sean Gordon Murphy, famed from DC’s popular Batman: White Knight franchise. The sci-fi story takes place in a hi-tech city where life is managed by the GRID – an automated transportation system with no room for human error… or joy.
With GRID ruling the roads, there’s no room for human drivers, but desperate need will force Clutch to challenge the system. Image’s summary reads:
As technology in America advanced, cities began creating the GRID: a robotic transportation system that not only made cars obsolete, it made them illegal. But an outlaw named “Clutch” has no choice but to get behind the wheel one more time. What starts out as a race to save his granddaughter’s life quickly turns into a rebellion against technology, fascism, and the future of a divided America.
The Last Driver is a love letter to classic cars and the media that celebrates them, creating a world where one skilled driver can make all the difference. Cover art by Murphy, Corin Howell, Matteo Scalera and Ryan Ottley set the scene, with the tagline, “This car is my chapel. This wheel is my bible. This road is my religion. Let us pray.”
However, The Last Driver isn’t just about cars, with Murphy telling the Hollywood Reporter:
I was in France when I started to think of this book, at the race track at Le Mans. The museum was doing construction, so they moved about a billion dollars worth of cars to a nearby hangar located in a cow pasture. It was an amazing sight! And it made me wonder who was going to take care of such valuable cars in the future – not just race cars, but movie cars. Not only would this story be an excuse to draw cars, but I could compare the dying of car culture – switching to electric cars that drive themselves – and use it as a metaphor for people ceding control to government control.
Last Driver Is Doing Something Different – Will It Catch On?
As both artist and writer, Murphy has an unusual level of control over the project, and is opting to tell the story in landscape format, with each page likely taking up two physical comic pages (as shown in the first issue preview, below.)
It’s a rare way to present comics, but it’s also easy to see how it would be suited to this particular story, allowing Clutch to tear across the page like few characters before him. In the images available so far, it’s already clear to see how this style communicates the scale of Clutch’s playground as he tears across the GRID.
Little is known of the characters other than Clutch, however his granddaughter and a human cop named ‘Womack’ both appear to be part of the narrative, the latter chafing under an automated system where his input and control are essentially hypothetical.
The Last Driver is already visually stunning, but its sci-fi backstory also has a point to make about American culture, warning of division caused by “computer algorithms and artificial intelligence.” While Clutch’s mission starts out as an attempt to save his granddaughter, it will build to larger significance as he fights for freedom. Murphy states:
I wanted the main character to be Native American – someone who understands freedom in a different way, because of how it was taken from him.
New series The Last Driver is a sci-fi love letter where cars represents American freedom, and the titular hero Clutch goes up against an automated dystopia that has torn American down the middle – Mad Max and Blade Runner fans get ready to rejoice when issue #1 drops.
The Last Driver #1 is coming August 19 from Image Comics.
