INTERVIEW: ‘Surgeon X’ creates world on brink of medical collapse

The future, according to Surgeon X, is bleak. The world has fallen victim to a medical apocalypse, and those people who have survived the plague must outrun and outwit the ever-looming threat of more disease.

The comic book, now available in a paperback volume, is set in a dystopian 2036, a time when medical advancements have progressed but simple infections can kill. The main character in Surgeon X Vol. 1: The Path of Most Resistance is Rosa Scott, a vigilante doctor who treats patients with black-market drugs and largely disregards the Hippocratic Oath.

In addition to the new paperback, there’s Surgeon X Special: Trial & Error, an all-new digital exclusive available only on comiXology and Amazon Kindle.

The book is the brainchild of creator/writer Sara Kenney and features art from the late John Watkiss and Warren Pleece. Karen Berger serves as editor. Surgeon X is Kenney’s first comic book, although she’s dedicated her life to art and science, and worked on a number of documentary projects.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Kenney about Surgeon X. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.

Where did the idea for Surgeon X come from?

The idea has evolved over a decade but came from my experiences of the medical world and the experts I’ve met and spoken with over the years. I’ve been thinking about this character for such a long time — a female surgeon who has an incredible ability at surgery but isn’t a superhero. I’ve got folders and folders of story ideas for dramas and for documentaries. I was looking back through the folders, and I found an idea I wrote for a Future Shock! [The Story of 2000 AD] called The Medic. It was a story about an extraordinary female surgeon, who uses futuristic technology. I never submitted the idea — I was too chicken!

Since then I’ve been shaping the idea for Surgeon X, and 2014 was the year I really developed it a lot further. I think the events going on since the recession and with the antibiotic crises all filtered into this [dystopian] world that Rosa Scott inhabits.

What do you think these stories say about today’s world?

What I’ve tried to do is extrapolate into the future based on the ripples we see today. I’m interested in using story to explore how we treat our sick and vulnerable, to make us think about our own health. I also think that through the eyes of Lewis, we get a sense of paranoia, and we see someone trying to figure out what is going on. What is reality, and what is fake? Who can be trusted, and who is trying to control us? I think [a] lot of people are asking those questions at the moment.

Why should art and science not be separated?

This is such a big question, and I could talk about this for hours. However, I’d love you to print an extract from a documentary interview I did with one of the incredible experts who worked on Surgeon X. His name is Professor Roger Kneebone, and he’s a surgeon and public engagement expert and a very wise man.

‘I think this separation of art and science is highly dangerous and really painful. I think there’s a growing sense that if you want to have a well paid, sensible, worthwhile career, you need to do science, not art. And if you do elect to do science, you don’t need art. And, therefore, the corollary of that is that art and crafts and all those related areas are seen as unimportant and are therefore being extinguished from the secondary school curriculum. And I think this is a fundamental misconception and highly dangerous. Because I think that in science, just as much as in any other area, perhaps more so, art is a central part of it, it’s a central part to the practice of science, but equally it’s a central part to the ideas of science and the thinking of science. And I think this is a really unhelpful division which, if it’s not checked, is going to lead down the road to a generation of scientists who just can’t do things with their hands, and can only think along tramlines within a scientific frame that’s all they’ve been taught at school.

‘I think that that blending of art and science, is something that needs to be there right from the very beginning, I mean, it is there right from the beginning. Small children, they always draw, they always make things with their hands, they always do all sorts of things. But then that tends to be given a lower priority as they go through the educational system, through primary and secondary school and then into university, and then this artificial division starts to become apparent. I think it’s crazy, and it needs to be stopped, I’m very worried about it, it’s highly dangerous and I think we should do everything we can to counter it.’

What inspired you to make the jump to comics? Did you always see Surgeon X as a comic?

I’ve loved comics for a long time. My dad was a big comics fan, and I read them a lot as a teenager. I just couldn’t believe the extreme characters and story-worlds you could get in comics compared to many other mediums. I loved the Vertigo line, and, of course, Karen Berger was a massive hero. I started thinking about the character of Surgeon X and quickly realized that I wanted to do it as a comic. When I’d worked up the courage to approach Karen Berger, and she really liked the idea, then that was kinda the best seal of approval I could get! I’m so excited that Karen has started Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics. Can’t wait to see what she does next!

What do you hope the readers take away from this recent paperback?

The story of Surgeon X is a ‘what if we do nothing’ story. It’s a thought experiment if you like on what we could face if we aren’t able to organize ourselves. I’m hoping our world won’t descend into this sort of chaos! Most, but not all, … the scientists I’ve spoken to don’t believe it will get this bad. They believe that we will come up with solutions. We do have the technological knowhow; we just need the political will and funding.

I hope this story will entertain but also get people talking and thinking about these solutions. We’ve built on the Surgeon X story-world by creating an app, which features documentaries and animations. I hope fans of the comic will explore this material, too. You can download the app and issue 1 of the comic for free from Google Play and the app store. On the app, you can view the whole comic in the original black and white inks drawn by John Watkiss, so this is a real art lover’s delight.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Surgeon X Vol. 1: The Path of Most Resistance is now available in paperback. Surgeon X Special: Trial & Error is now available from comiXology and Amazon Kindle. Click here for more information.