“Plutocracy: Chronicles of a global Monopoly“ the story in art by Abraham Martinez is a dystopian look at a possible future in a graphic novel format.

It’s 2051 and corporations run the world now. Everyone is a shareholder, but some have more shares than others. A young writer asks to write a book about the history of the company which now runs the world and is strangely enough given full access. When everything is a product, even a tell all book is a profit center.

It’s a novel in the style of 1984. The story is bleak and the art is pretty static. I like what the author tried to do but the whole thing comes across as pretty ham-fisted, and I ended up not really caring for it.

What I love about this book is the way it engaged me from the very beginning. The plot is thought-provoking and fascinating. It'd be a great addition to our school library.

I do truly hate to pan a book on here, but I found the art to be substandard and the story to be poorly done. I could not finish.

this was an interesting take on a very dense topic. I quite liked the sparse feel of the artwork, and it brings some understanding to the terrifying thought of a near-future with complete control by the wealthy few.

This book is deeply flawed. There are 15 pages of exposition before we get introduced to our protagonist. There are also large parts of the book that are anti-capitalist and anti-communist rants about the dangers of monopolies and the anti-democratic steps that large multi-national corporations and banks are taking.

The art is ugly; the characters are unlikeable, and, it meanders as it puts across its thesis. The first of these two things are artistic decisions that are understandable and to a certain extent, are successful, given the nature of the story. The world of Plutocracy is not a one in which anyone would want to live in. However, the pace meant it was a slog to read.

Plutocracy does examine what is happening right now in the world and puts forward a nightmarish vision of a future dominated by a single corporate entity. It has plenty of proactive things to say about the dangers that humanity faces but does so in such a blunt, almost clumsy way that it was hard to engage with. It wants to serve as a warning of what is to come. It does so in such a way that few will heed.

I think I liked the book more than perhaps it deserves due to my agreement with some of the book's politics, and, because when it does get going, it is both entertaining and thought-provoking. A shame then it takes too long to get to these sections and that they don't last long enough.

An intelligent graphic novel on a topic of importance – and that’s already enough to recommend it.

Some may criticize the static quality of the art, but I think it’s a good example of how a ‘talking heads’ approach can work well sometimes (rather than being a totally unacceptable approach as many think). This is also a good example of a ‘Tell, don’t show’ type comic book (as opposed to the usual ‘show, don’t tell’ cliche), as most of it is conveyed in the words…and as long as the words are interesting that is also fine.

The words are interesting, as its investigating a very important subject which affects us all: the increasing corporate dominant of the world.

The year is 2051. Not that far from now. The excessive merging of companies since the 20th century have resulted in a single company employing all the workers in the world. It didn’t take long for The Company, as it calls itself, to take over world government too. It was the ultimate victory of the Plutocracy.

Homero worked quietly as a detective in The Company for years. One day, he quits, determined to find more meaning in his life. Maybe journalism? He decides to investigate how The Company came to be.

Hmmm. Plutocracy is definitely based on what is currently happening in the world. The Haves are increasingly purchasing politicians so that tax and other laws are re-written to favor the rich. Hopefully, we will stop it before it results in the dystopian future depicted here. Even the artwork is drab with a greenish cast. Still, I enjoyed the surprise ending. 3 stars.

Thanks to Papercutz and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Premise - The world has been taken over by a central Company and one lone investigator is searching for the truth of its history as well as the current practices. The trope of Companies taking over has been used extensively. What makes this journey unique is the Noir feel and at times some food for thought on some modern dilemmas, especially the social experiment being played out on Social Media.

As usual, the investigator uncovers more than they bargained for and Martinez's writing quickly lured me into the tale. I read it rapidly in one sitting and have since taken my time over the next two days to pour over it in closer detail.

I highly recommend the printed graphic novel over the ebook.

Recommended: Noir fans; anyone who likes to chew on ideas; and all non-sheeple.

Hmmm… A book that tries to envisage a future Earth, where the entirety of humanity is there to serve the one Company that rules everything, the solitary corporation that has bought out all others, and all our freedoms and democracy with it. One minute our hero is working as a cop for The Company, then retiring as he has funds to sort out a new line, perhaps in journalism, the next he's broke and desperate for someone to employ him in working out the Company's backstory. Funnily enough, someone agrees to do just that.

But we might have wished they didn't, for this is just a poorly-written yack-fest. The investigation starts with people waffling on about how the Company got to power, with no connection to our reality – this is no moral, no parallel, no allegory or fable of our own lives and times. It just is its own insular story we cannot care enough about. And every way he turns – to the President of Earth, to, er, some other bloke – all we get is weakly didactic yack. The problem with that is, unfortunately, it never feels like having anything to say to us – there's no warning, just discussion. The book flashes white, and never the red of 'stop going down this route'.

There is hardly any red in it anyway, for this has a very grey, muted palette, with lots of semi-invisible people in the shadows. Details did look rather appropriate – I'm sure I recognised a bit of Hitler's Germania idea of a world capital in the Company's Presidential Palace, and in amongst all the horrendously ugly caricatures lots of Rees-Mogg hats on bankers. But only a supercomputer that knew more about us than we do ourselves, through near-infinite abilities to cross-reference and log each and every contact, thought and purchase, seemed to hit home. The rest could have been a fantasy about anywhere, and the fact it keeps mentioning a financial crisis of the 2010s, when the closest we had was the one begun in 2008 or earlier, seems to suggest this really isn't connected to telling us anything about our modern world. In other words, it's nigh-on pointless. One and a half stars, and a lot of that is the design.

The government has been taken over by a business, The Company, and run like one as well. The entire world is run by one person. This book is about a man who wants to know how this system started. The Company supports this man's desire to write a book exposing The Company just because it will make money.

I think you’ll enjoy this book a lot more than I did if you’re more interested/knowledgeable about government and politics. It was an interesting concept and I liked the story enough but I don’t see it being something very memorable for me. I liked the art and the structure of the graphic novel was well done (I.e. nonlinear and includes “multimedia” content). Overall not a bad book but I just don’t think I’m the right audience.

Plutocracy is a fascinating dystopian graphic novel. I enjoyed the way color and image were used alongside words in the text to transport the reader to an alternative, stark reality. The work Abraham Martinez has done in creating features and images of haunting figures is also noteworthy. Well worth the read.

There wasn't a lot of tension to the story. No big fight to be had. Just some musings on what the world might looks like in a capitalism taken to the extreme.