SUBGENRE #1 / Script by MATT KINDT/ Art by WILFREDO TORRES / Colors by BILL CRABTREE / Letters by JIM CAMPBELL / Covers by MATT KINDT & BRIAN HURTT / Published by DARK HORSE COMICS & FLUX HOUSE BOOKS

Verge is a typical private detective. True, his sassy secretary Ray is a holographic AI, but apart from that he’s the typical world-weary shamus, complete with trenchcoat, sent from Central Casting.

His clients are the corporation that make all the entertainment in the world. His case involves a triple murder of the same strange cult that are trying to kill him. And his prime suspect is a book-collecting heiress who seems oddly familiar. That is not the weird part.

The weird part is Verge keeps having dreams. Dreams of being a barbarian swordsman called Vee. Dreams where his AI is a sassy fairy named Bud. Dreams where the same cultists are trying to kill him. And somehow that seems right… or does it?

The latest publication from Matt Kindt’s Flux House Books imprint, Subgenre sounded like it would be right up my alley. I’m a fan of detective stories and barbarian fantasy, so a story mixing the two should be my bread and butter. Yet it was Kindt’s horrific conceit of a future where one company creates all art that hooked my heart. I am not sure precisely where Kindt is going with this story, but I suspect it will all tie into that off-hand idea.

It takes an artist of tremendous versatility to draw a story which transcends convention as Subgenre does. Thankfully, Kindt found the perfect collaborator in Wilfredo Torres. Backed by the colors of Bill Crabtree and the letters of Jim Campbell, every page of Subgenre sings.

While Subgenre looks like it is merging two schools of genre fiction into some rough chimera, it is clearly building towards a bigger point. What that point may be is unclear, but I think it will be amusing seeing where this story goes.

Subgenre #1 releases on October 18, 2023.