POSSIBLE SPOILERS .......



Finished in one sitting. This book grabbed me from the first few pages. The art fit in with the story; it helped enhance the overall story. This story had me on an emotional roller-coaster. It made some valid points regarding violence and sexuality and how it pair with each other. By the ending I was an emotional wreck. Terrified of rhe possible ending. Mr. Vaughn is one of my favorite graphic author and rest assured he's gonna challenge your thinking.

##BRIANKVAUGHAN
#NETGALLEY
#SPECTATORS

Overall this was a fun read and had great art however don’t think there was wayyy too much graphic sex scenes a bit unnecessarily but it got straight into the action and fast moving plot from the start with a mass shooting. If you’re looking for a kind of weird/different thrilling graphic novel this could be for you.

Thank you to net galley for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Warning - very graphic sex scenes and violence.

I will start off by saying that I am not the target audience for this at all. I thought I would be after reading the blurb on NetGalley and Goodreads as well as some reviews, but now looking back, I really wasn’t. I went in expecting to have this socially critical, graphic, intense reading experience, which other people seemed to be having. Unfortunately, I found that this felt very undercooked. It felt like the gore and the sex were thrown in only for the shock value in order to distract from the fact that the message of the book was poorly communicated, and the main relationship felt very surface-level. I liked the idea of the book, this social commentary about how desensitized we have gotten and how we are attracted to some messed-up things, and in a dystopian setting, yes, please. However, this book did not do a good job at portraying any of it. This felt like a hentai, without the minimal plot hentais usually have.

i did like the art style, the beginning really hooked me as well. Overall, just expected a bit more.

STUNNING. The story? Chefs kiss. The romance? Chefs kiss. All around a masterpiece. I really enjoyed every aspect of this one!

With thanks to the author, publishers Image Comics, and NetGalley for providing me with a DRC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

In this graphic novel, two ghosts from different eras of history form an unlikely friendship in the afterlife that sees them act as voyeurs observing the state of society hundreds of years in the future. This society seems obsessed with sex and violence and the rush they both provide, particularly when watched from a safe distance, and really with the proliferation of online pornography today and the seemingly regular mass-shooting events reported in the news, the future as it is described here is not all that hard to believe.

So the premise was really good for this one but I found it got a little wordy around the midpoint, where some of the dialogue felt a little like filler and didn’t seem to add much to the story. I thought the artwork was excellent though and not unnecessarily graphic to capture the shocking nature of the subject matter, while the use of colours and black and white images to make the dead stand out from the living was very effective.

there's a scene early in spectators where a woman is bored at the movies, scrolling porn on her phone, just before a mass shooting erupts in the theater. she dies, becomes a ghost, and then proceeds to drift through a decaying future with a cowboy-like specter, witnessing violence and sex in equal measure. the premise sounds outrageous, but in practice it's a sobering, surreal metaphor for how we consume tragedy and pleasure alike, especially through media.

for me, the most compelling thread was the "game" the mass shooters played to rack up the most kills, a grotesque competition that eerily mirrors how modern news cycles obsess over body counts and headlines. it’s deeply unsettling, and intentionally so.

the other storyline follows the ghosts as they search for a threesome to spectate. at first, it reads as ridiculous, but in the context of a world unraveling from nuclear fallout and existential despair, it feels like a desperate attempt to find meaning or intimacy at the end of everything. a search for one last beautiful or honest moment, even if it's borrowed from someone else's life.

the also touches on shame, particularly the way we're taught to hide or suppress curiosity. the protagonist recalls a moment from childhood when her father covered her eyes during a movie, only for her to seek out that scene later when no one was watching. this tension between privacy and voyeurism, between internal desire and external spectacle, is what the whole graphic novel grapples with.

the art is lush and immersive, elevating the bizarre into something poetic. this isn't a book for everyone. it's explicit, disjointed, and philosophically dense. but if you're open to being challenged, and maybe a little disturbed, it's absolutely worth the read.

I liked this graphic novel because it wasn’t the norm. First of all it starts with a mass shooting and then the main character ends up in the afterlife watch the world being destroyed and lots of graphic sex but it’s fun and sexy and dark and I enjoyed it

As is referred to early on in the book, this definitely is no Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze rendition of the afterlife!

Val is killed in a mass shooting by some fool following #Leaderboard, an online ‘game’ to see how many deaths one individual can inflict in one setting.
Her Afterlife sees her travelling back and forward in time where her ghost-self is a ‘spectator’ to real-life events, much in the same way that the internet is used now.
She’s mostly a lone voyeur till she meets a cowboy from the past called Sam. They initially band together to find an end-of-days threesome to watch (this is a pretty graphic graphic novel!) as the world seems to be eventually facing utter destruction with nuclear attacks taking place worldwide. And it seems like the #Leaderboard craze is just building up bigger death rates as time goes on.

Definitely a very ‘Adult Content’ graphic novel, but I was mightily impressed with the story concept and the illustrations. Brian K Vaughan is the writer behind the ‘Saga’ series and many more. I’ve never read anything by him before but he’s definitely on my ‘want to read’ list now.

This was very much not my cup of tea, so take my rating with a grain of salt. I've read and enjoyed both Saga and Paper Girls, and while I still enjoyed the art style I'm not sure I would have requested this one if I had read the blurb. It is shockingly violent and explicitly sexual, with the two ghost protagonists existing to partake in the violence and sex as spectators (hence the title). The social commentary is there, but for me it felt like the shock factor was the focal point and overshadowed the commentary.

Respectfully… wtf did I just read? This felt like nightmare fuel wrapped in a fever dream wrapped in a wet dream. It’s trippy, chaotic, and I honestly would love to know what kind of drugs fueled the creation of this, said with all due respect, of course. The art is undeniably striking, but the story itself left me baffled more than anything else. It’s ambitious, yes, but in the same way that a hallucination is ambitious: you might never recover from it, and you’re not entirely sure you wanted to take the ride in the first place.

4 ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Image Comics for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This graphic novel gives an explicit, in-your-face experience of all kinds of voyeurism, along with the pursuit of happiness and pleasure in an increasingly violent world. It is heavy on nudity, sexual content and violence so please take that into account if you are interested in reading this.

I have enjoyed previous works by Brian K Vaughan (Saga and Runaways), and was delighted to be given the chance to read this as a ARC. It did not disappoint! The art style was not my favourite (there was not a huge variety in people's shapes and sizes which really bothered me), though I loved how it was coloured. In fact, I was very impressed by the use of colour and its absence to represent different planes of existence.

Overall I'm not sure that this was quite as profound as it intended to be, but it is a great stand-alone work.

A masterpiece of unusual delights, dark comedy and provocative ideas, Brian K Vaughan's Spectators follows (I can't believe I'm writing this) two voyeuristic ghosts as they try to watch a threesome during what might be the end of humanity. It's hard to place its influences - sometimes it evokes Moorcock's 'Dancers at the End of Time' or Wim Wenders' 'Wings of Desire', other times a Kevin Smith or Jim Jarmusch flick - but at heart it's just a conversation between two very different people falling in love. It's by far my favourite of his works!

This graphic novel was fantastic! I devoured it in one sitting and couldn’t look away.

The female protagonist, Val, dies near our present day and becomes a ghostly specter.
Centuries later in the future, she spends her time drifting among the living, drawn to watching violence, sex, and sensational content. She eventually meets Sam, a man from a time before hers, just as the world edges toward nuclear fallout and an end-of-days scenario.

The artwork is beautiful and haunting, using a mix of black-and-white and color to distinguish between the different spiritual planes. The story is so over the top that you almost become desensitized to things like one of the side characters being naked all the time. At its core, though, it’s a sharp commentary on modern society, current politics, and a not-so-distant possible future.

As an elder millennial, I felt like this was made just for me. The main character is probably around my age, and her first encounter with an R-rated movie was uncannily similar to my own.

I loved this and will be thinking about it for a long time. I’ll be recommending it to anyone even remotely interested.

Plot:5/5
Writing: 5/5
Art :5/5
My Enjoyment: 5/5

*** I received an ARC and am voluntarily leaving my honest review.

Even though it starts off with a mass shooting in a movie theater, this was fun and oddly cozy hah. There isn't really a plot and you just kind of follow a couple of ghosts while they wonder around and talk to each other, but the art is gorgeous and Brian K Vaughan has always been really good at writing interesting characters and good dialogue. Saga's a pretty sexual book, but I was still pretty surprised at how much straight up porn is in this hah. It's pretty gory too, but it's kind of about voyeuristic ghosts watching people, so it's just kind of part of the story. It's kind of odd in a funny way how many times mass murder happens in the background and while the ghosts are wondering around and just kind of chatting. It makes sense in context of the story, but it did throw me off more than once how often what seems like a major plot point ends up being something that gets brushed off by the next panel hah. It reminded me a lot of the movie Wings of Desire. It was a fun book and I enjoyed it quite a bit overall. I'd probably say it's more of a 3.5, but I'll round up. Thanks for the ARC!

I am a big fan of Brian K Vaughan and although this wasn't my favorite of his, I still enjoyed it! I was not expecting such graphic scenes but maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised. I think my main issue is that it ended too quickly, I want more!

I got this book solely based on the cover. First off.....HOLY SHIT! 😄 🤣 I was not expecting this type of book for this cover at all. Starts off right away with the erotica aspect and stays heavily throughout the book. This storyline was interesting and kept me wanting to finish the rest of the book. Quick read and I liked how the storyline would switch from present to future as the characters in the book happen to be ghosts 👻

Spectators is unapologetically bold. Filled with nudity, ghosts, and apocalyptic chaos. Vaughan blends the supernatural with raw social commentary, creating something equal parts shocking and thought-provoking. I’m not entirely sure what I just read, but it was strange, provocative, and undeniably fun.

This comic honestly surprised me. I picked it up for the names attached and for the cover itself, but what kept me hooked was how it blends raw, uncomfortable themes with such gorgeous, unsettling art. I really liked how it portrayed violence and sex in today’s world, not in a cheap or over-the-top way. That alone made it stand out for me.
What also impressed me was how it combined different timelines and perspectives. I was a bit afraid at first, to mix it so heavily, but it did work out very well.The way it jumped between ages felt seamless, and the painterly illustrations tied it all together beautifully. The style is stunning. It feels eerie and creepy in places, but as I mentioned, in a way that works, pulling you deeper instead of pushing you away. It’s not often you see that balance of disturbing and mesmerizing executed this well, I think.
That said, the pacing dragged for me at times. It was too text-heavy sometimes, and there are stretches that felt a little too meditative or abstract, where I found myself waiting for the story to pick up again or be faster. But even then, the atmosphere carried me through, and I was still left thinking about it afterward.
Overall, Spectators isn’t an easy or casual read, but it’s a striking one. If you’re into unsettling stories with gorgeous art and themes that stick with you long after, this one is worth picking up.

An interesting concept, that holds a mirror up to our current society. It explores heavy themes and looks deep at the darkest parts of human nature. I enjoyed the design, especially the use of and lack of colour.

"Spectators" is the kind of graphic novel that leaves me in an introspective mood, which isn't bad at all. There was a lot to think about the human condition without resorting to sermons of what's good or bad. The writing and art don't pull punches. Readers are voyeurs as much as the characters. The sex and violence sought and viewed by the ghosts is no different than today's world. The novel is a spot-on allegory of our times. As a reader, I was engrossed in the many ways people processed "the end of days." I wouldn't be surprised if the world kicks off just how this book described. And the way the book ended? Art. The author and artist captured humanity in its truest form, in my opinion. Sex and violence at the end of all things? Yep, sounds about right.