Dark Horse’s new Cyberpunk 2077 miniseries perfectly captures the far gone and violent corporate culture of a true cyberpunk dystopia.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team #1, by Cullen Bunn, Miguel Valderrama, Jason Wordie, and Frank Cvetkovic.
In the world of CD Projekt Red’s upcoming RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, everything is privatized. This is a primary theme of many cyberpunk worlds across various forms of media. Through novels, movies, videogames, and comics we’ve seen privatized police forces, governments, and even full franchised churches complete with drive-thru confessionals (see Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash.) To add to this list, Dark Horse Comics’ new mini-series Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team introduces privatized emergency services that come at a very high cost.
Trauma Team, or TT Inc as it is commonly referred to, is not a new creation within the pages of Dark Horses’ mini-series but instead dates back to the original Cyberpunk 2020 TTRPG created by Mike Pondsmith. Trauma Team is one of many mega-corporations in Pondsmith’s world. The Megacorporations or MegaCorps are a handful of massive international privately-owned organizations that have grown so powerful that they are viewed by many as sovereign nations unto themselves. They are, like all for-profit businesses, driven entirely through self-interest and are willing to kill anyone who stands between them and their aims. They have long since eclipsed the power of any governing bodies they are able to carry out extrajudicial actions and killings while suffering no ramifications whatsoever.
Trauma Team is no exception to the idea of literal cutthroat business practices. This is made clear within the first page of Trauma Team #1. The team is seen dropping into a particular hot situation — a firefight in a crowded intersection, cars overturned, pools of blood reflecting the massive advertisements and neon signs of the cyberpunk night, and people running and screaming from the violence. The team is tasked with rescuing a man, a platinum member of TT Inc, who is seemingly the target of the gunmen. The paramedics are heavily armed and open fire on the gunmen as they make their way to the client. Unfortunately, they are unable to rescue him, and all but one team member – the main character Nadia – is left standing. The rest are either gunned down or taken out by a man wielding two katanas and sporting powerful bionic limbs. The second half of the book sees Nadia cleared for active duty, and placed on a new crew. They enter an apartment block on their first mission together only to find that the person they have been sent to rescue is the same katana-wielding man that wiped out Nadia’s old unit.