His dialogue has picked up greatly over the years, and he falls into familiar habits less often – there’s no fact-dumps here, or the length moralistic lessons you can find sometimes in Ex Machina. Vaughan’s writing is, as you may expect, very strong indeed. His characters are well designed and entertaining, but proportion and perspective start to fall off-kilter in sequences where they aren’t supposed to, and the final few pages reveal a sketchier, less detailed side of his work. Marcos Martin on his worst day is still one of the finest artists around, with an exceptional use of poise and placement in his characters – but his work here starts to struggle partway through. Whilst his layouts are well-executed and stylish, his art becomes weaker and scratchier towards the end, with the final sequence particularly wobbly. Surprisingly, Marcos Martin’s art visibly falters halfway through the issue. Her work is utterly fantastic, and should be one of the main reasons you continue picking up the book. It helps that Martin is drawing hovercars and people wearing squids on their heads, of course, but Vicente’s colouring does more for the issue than anything else here.

Buildings are bright green, the costumes are garish and manic, and the starkness of the colouring creates a futuristic landscape. Vicente is the undisputed star of this first issue, taking Martin’s work and creating some blunt, strikingly coloured patterns for the world the characters live in.

Instead, the idea is conveyed solely through Marcos Martin’s artwork – although more accurately, it’s conveyed through Vicente’s colouring. Vaughan doesn’t swell too much on this for the moment, leaving aside any temptation to moralise. In their efforts to hide from the world, everybody now wears a mask or holographic facial mask, or paints their face – in essence, everybody becomes a totally unique individual. Not particularly a unique concept, but the creative team use it for some excellent sight gags, creating an uneven sense of humour which moves through every page of the issue. The Private Eye is set after this event, focusing on the public backlashing against their previous happiness to make themselves open books. Families collapse, businesses fall, and it looks like the press get put on an extremely tight leash. As everybody nowadays shares everything about themselves with the rest of the world, private photos, conversations, bank details, and everything gets shown to everyone else.

Every inch of private information gets made public, with massive damage worldwide. The premise of The Private Eye is that at some point the internet basically implodes, probably through nefarious means.

The private eye brian k vaughan