The year is 2036. The location is the UK. The crisis is antibiotic resistance. Image Comics' Surgeon X by Sara Kenney and John Watkiss, offers an examination of a not-to-distance future in which the world is divided on who is worthy of survival and who is expendable. Not in a dystopian nightmare metaphor, but the all-to-real possibility that age of antibiotics is coming to an end.
Into this miasma of ethical questions steps Dr. Rosa Scott. Committed to the Hippocratic Oath means not letting something like the government parceling out antibiotics to the ‘worthy” stop her from saving lives. Even if it means Rosa must quit her day job and open a surgery suite in her basement with her schizophrenic brother Lewis and her brother-in-law Jacob as assistants. Adding to her growing list of stressors, Rosa and Lewis are also dealing with a revelation about the recent death of their mother.
Surgeon X reminds us that we live in a rarefied time. Until the discovery of penicillin in 1928, humans were at the mercy of microbes. We were incredibly susceptible to death from infection and now-curable diseases. In an exclusive preview below from SURGEON X #2 – on stands October 26, 2106 – examines how society might break down if we are forced to return to the status quo in a post-antibiotic world.
The official synopsis:
“RELATIVE INSANITY,” Part Two As Rosa Scott aka Surgeon X struggles to save lives in a post-antibiotic world, she learns more about the horrific death of her mother. This news pushes her brother into a psychotic breakdown, and when the Scott family have a royal engagement at Buckingham Palace with King Charles, things get even weirder.