Wild Palms comic

Wild Palms comic
by Bruce Wagner (writer) and Julian Allen (artist)

If you're over 30, you probably might remember the TV show Wild Palms that aired on ABC TV for five episodes in May of 1993. The show, set in a near-future Los Angeles, was meant to be a melange of cyberpunk and Southern California satire. 

The plot was utterly incoherent, and the show was deemed a failure, but for a brief period there in the Spring of 1993 it was the focus of a major marketing campaign, and had something of a buzz. This was back when there were no streaming channels, so any 'edgy' or 'unusual' content appearing on TV had to come from the networks.

The TV show is memorable nowadays mainly for featuring a cameo from William Gibson:

Wild Palms was based on a comic strip that was serialized in 1990 - 1993 in Details magazine.

Details was a kind of cross between the glossy cheesecake magazines like FHM and Maxim, and the more staid Esquire.

The comic, more so than the TV show, was intended by writer Wagner to emphasize how the introduction of 'virtual reality' could corrupt one's perception of 'true' reality, a task made easier in the comic's setting of Southern California, which is, of course, itself something of an 'artificial construct'.

In 1993 the comic strips were compiled into a trade paperback published by the UK firm Arrow. The trade paperback, long out of print, can only be had for exorbitant prices. Luckily, the entire volume has been scanned and posted to View Comics website.

I can't say that the comic is a masterpiece of 1990s sci-fi, or even 1990s melodrama; it is badly overwritten, with few panels left unmolested by the presence of text boxes. 

But the comic does have a sort of quirky originality, and showcases, with its flat color scheme and low-res, sketchy pencils, the very 1990s art style of illustrator Allen.

Summing up, if you are fond of pop culture detritus from the early 1990s, including detritus lightly flavored with second-generation cyberpunk tropes, then the Wild Palms comic might be worth a look.