Graphic Novel Review: HYBRED is the story of a future-adjacent, alternate reality LA

2 weeks ago 8

HYBRED

Writer: Jamie Mustard
Paintings: Francesca Filomena
Publisher: Street Noise Books
Publication Date: November 2025

The best sci-fi is ostensibly a mirror of our reality, showcasing critical issues or injustices. What the writer Jamie Mustard and artist Francesca Filomena crafted is an Afro-futuristic world that is immediately recognizable to anyone who lives in a big city like Los Angeles or New York, more importantly, it is a location that is instantly understandable to people from any local. What is also recognizable is the

In this dystopian near future, our Hybred, artist Johnny James, is a mixed-race child of this hellish landscape, a city called Great Angels. Raised in impoverished conditions, his early years are wasted in a state institution that failed to educate the children in its care. As one of the “dejected” children in this Section Home, Johnny discovered his love of art and the racially charged word for people like him, mulato. He would be reunited with his mother and siblings, eventually becoming a rising star in the art world of Great Angels.

Also, Johnny is a high-level psionic.

As we follow his development, we see his powers grow, and this is important to the ending, but I feel like there is a stronger story without the powers. The steel of this graphic novel is Mustard’s interpretation of the world, the social and economic injustices against the people making their way the best way they can, and Johnny’s powers are a distraction to this reflective exploration of our real world.

The book, like Johnny, is a hybrid mashup, an impassioned statement on race, culture, society, art, education, and the environment. This graphic novel gumbo blends social commentary with haunting visuals, asking why can’t the world be fixed without resorting to military service or gentrification, without the soapbox.

And this city isn’t just one note, as Gotham City is to Batman, the fictionalized world of Great Angels that Johnny calls home is just as important to the story as it is to him. Johnny survives in the neighborhood known as The Casque, a melting pot that will seem very familiar to anyone who lives in a big city with a history of immigrants. Mustard’s worldbuilding shines here. Great Angels could have been a typical apocalyptic pit, instead, we are shown a world that is suffering, but in that suffering, there is community. Outside the prison-like Section Homes, Johnny’s city has locations that shine like stars in the night, like the Drum Circle in the park, tugged at the memberberries of going to Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. The people of The Casque live in the shadows of Follyland, the utopian side of Great Angels. In Follyland, everything is bright, beautiful, and impressive, like the Morocoa movie theater on Follyland Boulevard. And as destitute as The Casque is, it isn’t as feared as The Outskirts.

And what would a city be without the people? From the varied folks who look out for young Johnny, like Reb, the male sex worker, or BJ Kang Fu, the old Phillinos man who would have Kang Fu playfights with passing kids, to the hardcore gangbangers who played a version of croquet in the park.

The textured world Johnny navigates is made visceral with Filomena’s hauntingly surreal visuals. The book is designed similarly to a children’s storybook, with big splash pages and unconventional anatomy for characters. It does a job of messing with your head as your brain sees these stylized images and instantly associates them with a kid’s bedtime book, if they were Guillermo del Toro or Tim Burton. Pages jump from bright and airy moments full of joy and excitement to dark scenes that are entrapping, some of my favorites are the dark, stylized pages. With the omniscient narrator, we don’t get to “hear” Johnny’s voice often, but the visuals make up for it.

I love a good sci-fi comic, but I would have loved to see more of this world, as grimy and dangerous as it is, there were still pockets of hope and joy that spoke to my inner kid growing up in New York City, loving Star Trek and Star Wars, coming of age in the 80s, discovering my city, finding my found family, and loving to draw.

Like the best sci-fi and Afro-futurism, HYBRED is a quiet, gorgeous book that says a lot.