Fox and Hare, a new title coming this fall from Vault Comics, will bring sorely needed Asian representation to the cyberpunk genre. The book is written by Jonathan Tsuei with art by Stacey Lee and will be on sale in print and digital November 3rd.

Cyberpunk as a genre can trace its roots back to the New Wave that science fiction experienced in the 1960s and 1970s. Writers such as JG Ballard, Samuel Delany and William S. Burroughs laid the genre’s foundations by shifting science fiction’s focus away from the science and onto the people. Later, William Gibson, through seminal works such as Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive (collectively called the “Sprawl” trilogy) would put cyberpunk on the map; other notable cyberpunk authors include Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling. Cyberpunk borrows aesthetic elements from many sources, including countercultural movements and film noir. Many early cyberpunk authors also had a fascination with Japanese and other Asian cultures, and this led to a permutation of Asian aesthetic elements into the burgeoning genre. And while Asian cultural elements are prominent in the genre, Asian people are not represented, and Vault Comics’ new Fox and Hare seeks to address this issue.

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Vault Comics provided an exclusive first look of Fox and Hare to Comic Book Resources, providing more information on the book’s plot, as well as a preview of covers and character designs. The story begins with Aurora, a black-market coder, who learns that a mega-corporation named Synastry Designs has discovered technology allowing it tap into the past lives of people. Now on the run, Aurora must turn to the Fox and the Hare, two of the city’s most notorious mercenaries, for protection. Writer Jonathan Tsuei saw a lack of representation of Asians in the cyberpunk genre, despite it leaning heavily on Asian cultures. Tsuei wished to not only reclaim the Asian aesthetics of cyberpunk, but also “reframe the themes of new technology (cyber) and rebellion (punk) through an Asian lens.” Tsuei goes on to say that Fox and Hare rebels not only against the status quo of the larger world but also the cyberpunk genre. Tsuei concludes by calling the project “very special” and hopes that readers will find it “just as special.”

Fox and Hare #1 Cover
Fox and Hare Cover
Fox and Hare character design
Fox and Hare character design
Fox and Hare character designs

Cyberpunk enjoys a reputation in academic and literary circles that goes beyond mainstream science fiction. The questions of ethics, morality and consciousness the genre asks have made it irresistible to generations of writers and scholars. The various cultural elements that have gone into cyberpunk, including those appropriated from Asian cultures, have also been the subject of much study. Yet Tsuei is correct in the observation that Asians are largely absent from a genre that has taken much from their cultures, and Fox and Hare will tackle this head-on.

Since 2016, Vault Comics has published some of the best science fiction, horror and fantasy comics, and will now bring Asian representation to the cyberpunk genre with Fox and Hare this November.

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Source: Comic Book Resources