I said recently that all roads lead to death, but what happens afterward? Ideally, it’s pearly gates and reuniting with every dog you’ve ever known in some idyllic field. But what about the rest of us, those left here on the mortal coil? The Body Trade offers one such perspective, and it’s a grim but potent tale of grief, loss, family, and revenge.
From writer Zac Thompson and artist Jok (In Hell We Fight), The Body Trade follows addict and ex-con Kim, who sets about on a mission of vengeance in finding the earthly remains of his dead son, Charlie. Along with dealing with his own past and a grieving ex (Tess), Kim finds himself tumbling into the unseen world of the “aftermarket for dead bodies.” It’s sort of like Blue Ruin meets Six Feet Under with a heaping helping of Breaking Bad.
Perhaps the most compelling part of The Body Trade‘s initial appeal is the work of Jok (as joined by letteter Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou). The art is chaotic and messy in all the right ways, and it fully sets the tone in terms of capturing the setting (Florida, home of crime capers and gator wrestlers), the overall emotionality (lots of deep rage and explosive emotion), and this unflinching baseline of humanity. All of those design choices are important in bringing us in and to perfectly set our teeth on edge for a story that’s about the mangled humanity that exists after a sudden and perhaps avoidable death. And the colors, too, are extra powerful, facilitating that heavy, muggy air that’s not only perfectly Floridian but really essential for fostering a mix of irritation and depression that further encapsulates this story.
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
But there’s also something else here that hints at some near-future timeframe. Be it the vehicles on the street, Charlie’s tiny “death pod,” or just the general architecture (like ours but with a tad more brutalist undertone), we get the sense we’re nearing our own extra depressive future. But it’s never really addressed directly, and I love that dynamic for The Body Trade. It pushes things just enough visually into the realm of sci-fi that it gets our brains operating in that sphere.
And yet the familiarity is unavoidable, and we’re forced to wrestle with this dynamic. It made me think of every J.G. Ballard story I’ve ever imagined coming to life — we may briefly marvel at the world around us until we realize it’s a hotter, uglier, more maddening version of our home. It’s a great feature for The Body Trade, and why so much of my early interest feels so sharp and almost tactile enough to actually grapple with head on.
But while the art brings us into the story and gets us experiencing this vivid emotional/sensory phenomenon, the layers go deeper as Thompson fully gets to work. Between books like Blow Away and Cemetery Kids Don’t Die, Thompson has had a truly killer 2024. And, to some extent, The Body Trade is a great continuation of that run. It’s perhaps the least “gimmicky” thing he’s done this year, and the whole body trade aspect is really just a means to get us to think about our own fears of dying, the inadequacy we experience when a loved one dies, and the uncertainty about what happens after death (both spiritually and logistically).
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
It’s a crime story very much like Hell or High Water: sure, that one’s a bank heist flick, but at the end of the day, both are really about what we’d do for family and the way we operate in the fuzziness between life and death, good and bad, etc. Sometimes the dialogue isn’t always as sharp, but I think the sheer emotionality and relatability is so clear and focused that it doesn’t matter as much. I like Thompson’s brain as he approaches a crime story because it feels brutal and unrelenting in exploring the imperfect but compelling emotionality that’s flooded these people’s lives.
At the same time that The Body Trade is a rather straightforward tale of one man’s burning vengeance, there’s also other aspects at work here. I touched on the subtlety of the near-future elements, and in continuation of/alignment with that sentiment, there’s some subtext here that really matters. Obviously the biggest of that is the whole corpse aftermarket, which is based on a real and horrifying thing, and that in and of itself is interesting enough as a story device.
Through this device, there’s a larger commentary forming: that as we push ourselves further and further into a climate nightmare and political hellscape, we lose track of the basic decency we have for life. That as much as Kim is raging against one company, he’s ultimately raging at this idea that everything can be commercialized and commodified, and that all of us should be outraged at this system that robs us of our last shred of humanity. Sure, Kim doesn’t handle this with anything resembling maturity or even a plan, but that’s just the emotional manifestation of this deep loss we’ve experienced on a societal level. This is where the world is headed and how we’re regarded, and the only sane man is the one fighting back. (Even as Kim’s behavior is never truly excused and instead treated with an appropriate level of concern and finger-wagging.)
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
There’s also a subplot with an agent of the company that secures the bodies, and perhaps she’s becoming aware of the body trade’s downsides. As it is now, that to me will 1) be a proper counter to Kim and 2) add another layer to the really interesting political/activism angle.
So, even just one issue in, and The Body Trade has made clear that death may be the easy part. It’s the living that have to contend with layers of repressed emotions, increasing societal decay, and this lingering sense that our own road into the ground is going to be the true nightmare. Things may still be developing (can we connect with Kim as a lead and not just a disappointment?), and there’s some downsides (again, the dialogue was a little iffy in parts).
But ultimately, The Body Trade #1 was a powerful start to something that goes right for the throat in exploring life, death, and everything in between, and I’m interested to see how it builds its revenge story into something truly thoughtful and cathartic. You could say I’m dying to see if it’ll break our hearts and smash our perceptions of death itself.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login