From the creative mind of Alyssa Milano, with artist Marcus To, colorist Ian Herring, and writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, Hacktivist is a fast-paced cyber-thriller about friendship and freedom in a time war.

Ed Hiccox and Nate Graft are young, brilliant, and the co-founders of YourLife, a social networking company that has changed the way the world stays connected. In secret, these best friends are also “sve_Urs3lf,” the largest, white-hat hacking group on the planet, exposing information and sparking revolutions across the globe.

The first issue dives right into the heart of this series, the use of technology to spark revolutions. Those revolutions can be how we connect with each other and keep in touch, to as big as overthrowing and changing a government. We’ve seen this in real life with Twitter playing a role in the Arab Spring, and Facebook allowing individuals to connect to affect change, to internet activists making sure the internet is up and running so people powered movements can connect and be heard. We’ve seen major parts of the internet shut down to prevent damaging legislation from being passed. This issue takes that change out of the hand of the countless numbers of faceless individuals typing away on keyboards behind the scenes, and puts it in the hands of the main characters Hiccox and Graft.

One can debate taking the away the efforts of so many and making it look like such grand efforts are possible by two individuals, but the idea is interesting. Tech pioneers today are creating change with every invention, with every improvement, so why not have them literally behind the scenes acting as hacktivists, helping on the ground political activists, in this first issue Tunisia.

As someone deep in this world, using technology to create change, the comic is an interesting concept and intelligently opens up a lot of questions and themes that should be fun to explore throughout its four issues. I can’t go too much into it without ruining the ending of the first issue, but as much as the comic talks about events like the Arab Spring, it also looks to dig into the NSA spying and governmental operations. While movements today are becoming more decentralized, they often line-up with centralized powers as well, and this dichotomy seems like it’ll be explored. Hopefully we’ll also get to question the benefits of a connected, stable world would bring to the main protagonists and their social networking platform.

Stories are often best when they reflect the modern world we live in. They’re great when they get us to think about that world. Hacktivist looks like it’s going in that direction, an old world form of communication commenting on a new world form of communication.

Story: Alyssa Milano, Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly Art: Marcus To
Story: 8.75 Art: 8.5 Overall: 8.75 Recommendation: Buy

Archaia/BOOM! Studios provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review