Your watchlist getting out of hand is one thing. Getting trapped inside the platform you built is a whole different problem, Crusaders. Content, the new original graphic novel from Curt Pires and Ryan Quackenbush, takes the infinite scroll into a science-fiction nightmare where stories, memories and somebody’s continued existence are all caught in the machinery.
Image Comics will release the trade paperback to comic shops on Wednesday, February 17, 2027, followed by bookstores on Tuesday, March 16, 2027. Pires, whose credits include Creature Corps and Fireborn, teams with Junior Baker the Righteous Faker artist Quackenbush for a thriller inspired by the writer’s own experience in Hollywood. The publisher points readers of Severance, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Social Network toward the book.
The story’s near future belongs to streaming services, and Trip Cruise is sitting at the top of that world. He is the valuable creative mind behind its biggest platform, also called Content. An experimental AI helmet is supposed to pull stories directly out of his brain, which already sounds like the kind of invention that needs several more rounds of testing before anybody straps it on.
When the helmet malfunctions, Trip winds up inside his own system. He has to navigate an endless succession of shows and broken memories, trapped in the entertainment structure he helped create. The man supplying the ideas is now stuck moving through the machine’s output, with no easy exit back to his own life.
His chance at getting out rests with Margot, a junior programmer whose human connection to Trip puts her in a position to try to save him. Together, they have to outsmart a machine designed to replace them. Failure means being permanently deleted from existence, which puts a particularly vicious spin on the idea of a platform deciding that somebody no longer belongs in its catalog.
Pires identifies Content as his first original graphic novel and says the project has been developing for years. He initially discussed the idea with Image’s Eric Stephenson at San Diego Comic-Con 2024. With the finished book approaching its 2027 release, he describes it as an intense labor of love for both creators and some of his most experimental and personal writing in recent years.
He also singles out Quackenbush’s lush painted artwork, drawing comparisons to the work of Dave McKean and Bill Sienkiewicz. That gives readers a useful sense of the visual ambition behind the project without pretending we have already read the finished book. A story built around unstable shows and fragmented memories gives an artist plenty to work with, and the supplied cover offers an early look at the book’s presentation.
Quackenbush says he is proud of what they have made and grateful that Pires brought him aboard to draw it. He describes the writing as sharp, wild and personal, with both creators investing a great deal of themselves in the result. His hope is that readers can see they made this book for themselves, a fitting sentiment for a story about a system trying to extract and replace human creativity.
The Content graphic novel carries ISBN 9781534331846. Readers can arrange a copy through local comic shops for February 17, with the bookstore edition arriving March 16 through independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Indigo and Waterstones.
Digital availability is planned across Amazon Kindle, Google Play, Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd’s Everand, Kobo, Overdrive, Hoopla, Sweet app and Comic Plus, among other platforms. For another side of Pires’ current work, check out our Creature Corps coverage. Meanwhile, put Content on your 2027 radar and keep those separate comic-shop and bookstore dates in mind.
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