Publisher Titan Comics is expanding the world of Blade Runner through a series of comic books. Their latest series, Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus, is the first major exploration of the setting outside Los Angeles. Now, a trailer for the highly anticipated comic has been released at San Diego Comic-Con 2024.
Written by Mellow Brown and Kianna Shore, with art by Rodolfo Taibo, Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus centers around two former soldiers. Stix is a combat model Replicant. Mead is a human Marine. Together, they work as detectives while hunting a traitor to their unit, who left them to die. This leads them into a three-front war between the Tyrell Corporation, a rival Japanese consortium called Cheshire, and the Yakuza.
The trailer for the first issue may be viewed below.
Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus a new side of the setting
The setting of Blade Runner is expansive, making reference to off-world colonies in the far reaches of space. Despite this, most of the material is based around the city of Los Angeles. This is logical, given how much of the world is uninhabitable. Most animals are extinct, with even insects fetching good money as exotic pets and status symbols. However, while there have been references to cities like London and Memphis, most of the series’ spin-offs are set in Southern California.
Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus marks the first time any media has explored the setting in Japan. This is markedly odd, given the influence that Japanese culture had on the original film in specific, and the neo-noir aesthetic in general. Author William Gibson, whose novel Neuromancer defined cyberpunk as a genre, emphatically stated that 1980s Tokyo influenced his work. It is fitting, then, that the new comic should finally explore what the Tokyo of the Blade Runner reality is like.
Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus #1 releases on July 31, 2024.
