reviewed by Maite Urcaregui, Assistant Professor, San José State University
Kit
Anderson. Second Shift. London: Avery
Hill Publishing, 2025. 160 pp. US $20.33. ISBN: 978-1-9173-5520-9. https://averyhillpublishing. bigcartel.com/product/second-shift-by-kit-anderson
Kit Anderson’s Second Shift (2025)
creates a science-fictional world in which a corporation named TERRACORP© terraforms
“outpost plantet[s]” in the hopes of creating another Earth (30). The
protagonist, Birdie Doran, works as a scientist on one of these outposts as part
of a three-person crew that includes Heck and Porter. The crew maintains the
mechanical “miners” and “farmers” and cares for greenhouses of moss, attempting
to create the conditions necessary for human life on a frozen, wintery planet. Doran
and crew are accompanied by a shape-shifting AI companion named Station that
creates “a seamless, beautiful world” to distract the workers from their isolation
and inhospitable surroundings (18). Ultimately, it’s the tensions and
connections that arise between the crew, the corporation, and their environment
(both natural and artificial) that make Second Shift so interesting. This
sci-fi graphic novel opens conversations about corporate power, the
exploitation of people and the environment, the limitations of AI, and the
power of art that are all too pressing in our own non-fictional present.
Structurally, each chapter of Second Shift
is prefaced with a black and white splash page that contains an excerpt from
the “TERRACORP© for LIFE!” handbook, corporate
propaganda that creates an ideological smokescreen to mask the dreary work
conditions crew members face. Rhetorically, these splash pages achieve two
things: first, they flesh out the
storyworld for the reader without using exposition, and second, they create a
sense of suspense and surveillance. The entry that precedes Chapter Two, for
instance, clarifies the nature of the crew’s work:
Your outpost planet has
amazing potential for life; it’s overflowing with (frozen) water. It’s rich in
lots of necessary minerals...and we’re taking care of the rest!
You can help, too! Care for your moss house; it’s making
oxygen for you and your crew. Maintain the miners and farmers, so they can
capture minerals and create soil. Because what’s Earth without...earth?
Sure, it may be a little cold outside, but that’s nothing a
few years won’t fix. Just how many years is that?
Don’t worry about it! (30).
In the span of a splash page, readers have a
clear understanding of the setting, a frozen outpost planet that’s not Earth,
and the storyworld, a dystopian world in which conditions on Earth have
necessitated the exploration of other planets. Just what those conditions are
remain ambiguous and unanswered throughout the graphic novel, but the
extractive corporate language might be a clue. Like so many of our real-world
corporations, TERRACORP© extracts natural resources and exploits workers, selling
them on the cruel optimism, to draw from Lauren Berlant, that their work is part
of a greater good and evading the more unsavory realities. The reader can’t
help but get pulled into this corporate narrative; the second person address
speaks to both crew members and readers alike. Anderson’s insinuating use of
the second person “you” reminds me of Inés Estrada’s Alienation, in
which an implant called a “Google-Gland” speaks to characters and readers
through the second person, creating a sense of inescapable surveillance. The
corporate ideology that convinces workers that their work is “mysterious and
important” also rings of the dark humor that has made Severance so
popular.
In addition to indoctrinating them with corporate
ideology, TERRACORP© also attempts to appease its workers by controlling their
dreams and altering their realities. Through an excerpt from the “TERRACORP©
for LIFE!” handbook, the opening splash page of the graphic novel informs
readers: “between shifts on TERRACORP©
outposts, all crew members are dropped-in to our company-exclusive DreamSpace®.
While inside, they can use their stasis time to brush-up on employee trainings,
enjoy credit-earning promotions, and embark on specially-tailored dream* (0).
Even in their “stasis time,” the crew members
can’t escape work. Their dreams are transformed into “employee trainings” and
“promotions” and sold back to them as an exclusive perk. This “free-time” also
isn’t free. An asterisk informs readers and employees that these so-called
benefits are “subject to credit allowance.” The handbook acknowledges “the
drop-out process,” the process of coming out of the DreamSpace® and re-entering
reality, “can be a little unpleasant,” but it quickly brushes aside by asking, “ISN’T
IT ALL WORTH IT?” (0). The corporate co-optation of workers’ dreams speaks
to the voraciousness of late-stage capitalism, where leisure and dreams become
just another playing field for profit. Porter, the whistle-blower on the crew,
who quickly is dropped-in and drops out of the rest of the narrative sadly,
draws attention to the blurred boundaries between DreamSpace® and work when he
asks, “Dropped-in, dropped-out, what’s the difference, right?” (10).
TERRACORP© also alters the crew members’ realities
during their working/waking moments. Their AI companion, Station, changes its
form and enhances the environment based on the crew members’ preferences. For
instance, when Doran is working in the moss house, she asks Station, “make the
moss house a little more interesting,” to which Station replies, “Sure! You
unlocked this one yesterday... You earned it!” (32-33). Station’s response
speaks to the gamification of a system that asks workers to work harder for
trivial perks (the sci-fi version of an office pizza party). This gamification
of both work and leisure is reiterated paratextually on each chapter’s title
page, which include pixelated icons as if out of a vintage video game.
While Doran is initially satisfied with this
system, her colleagues, Porter and Heck, are more disillusioned, and much of
the plot involves Heck pushing Doran to see past the artificial distractions
that surrounds them. The fact that this fictional exploration of AI-generated visuals
is told through comic form makes it even more powerful. The friction between
AI-generated and artist-generated images comes to the fore in a scene toward
the end of Chapter One. As Station guides Doran and Heck on a “sleeptrip,” the
white gutter of the page turns to black as the characters move into sleep. The
AI-generated dream, however, is of a human creating a landscape portrait from
within its frame, painting the shades of the sky and drawing the details of a
leaf before placing it onto a tree branch. The human behind the artwork is
obscured, however. Readers never see their body in full, only zoomed-in shots
of their isolated hands or legs. In the final splash panel of the portrait, the
human is gone altogether. By turning the comics frame into the frame of a
painting, Anderson uses the comics form to create a hand-made work of art
that’s created by AI. It’s all very meta. Anderson artfully creates a Russian
doll image that calls into question the role of AI in art and comics and draws
attention to the dangers of disappearing the hands, or the labor, that produce
it.
As the plot progresses, Doran and Heck begin to
question if, “Terracorp is even still out there,” if they’ll “be left waiting
for a signal that may never come. Just...dreaming” (69). The blurred boundaries
between consciousness (both being awake and being aware) and dreaming (both
literal and figurative) are at the heart of this sci-fi story. In this way, Second
Shift, Anderson’s first full-length graphic novel, builds on her earlier
work, largely independently-published minicomics, including the
Ignatz-nominated “Weeds,” and a collection of comic short stories titled Safer
Places (2024), also published by Avery Hill. In these earlier works,
Anderson frequently uses science-fiction, magic, and fantasy to explore
existential concepts, such as the nature of reality and the malleability of
memory. Second Shift is an admirable addition to Anderson’s corpus. In
it, Anderson effectively uses paratextual elements, chapter framings, and the
narrative and visual structure of comics to pull in readers, keep them
guessing, and have them questioning their own realities.
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