Graphic Novel Review: MODEL FIVE MURDER showcases a stylish sci-fi mystery

Model Five Murder

Cartoonist: Tan Juan Gee
Publisher: Silver Sprocket
Publication Date: June 2025

Tan Juan Gee’s graphic novella Model Five Murder follows an android named Io who performs space station maintenance for the Rohm Corporation. While out on a job, Io encounters a corpse floating through space. He pockets the corpse’s business card, which identifies him as Dr. Neumann, a private detective. When Io tracks down the address on the card, he learns that Neumann was a Rohm Number Five model like himself – and that he recently disappeared while investigating the murder of a labor union leader. Now that Io has learned the truth behind Neumann’s disappearance, he’s become a target himself.

Model Five Murder is a thematically rich murder mystery that plays with the question of whether concepts like “victim” and “murderer” have any meaning in a situation involving artificial life and artificial intelligence. If memories and consciousness can be transferred between bodies, is it murder to shoot an android? If androids are proprietary technology owned by a corporation, who has the legal right to make decisions about their bodies?

Model Five Murder is set on a space station called Tansang Loop, which has a population of two million documented human residents. According to Io, if you include undocumented residents and androids, the population is actually three times as large. The inside of the station is dirty and gritty, with grimy sidewalks, messy offices, and graffitied payphones. Were it not for the flying cars and hulking security robots, the city could easily be mistaken for a film noir version of Los Angeles. 

Tansang Loop is a company town that belongs to Roam Industries, a corporation that has a vested interest in keeping its resident workers underpaid and complacent. As Io investigates the circumstances of Neumann’s death, he quickly finds that the conspiracy to keep the workers in line goes all the way to the top of the corporate ladder. Within the company-controlled confines of the station, Io would be doomed on his own, but the labor union is pissed off and ready to riot.

The issue of artificial intelligence is, at its core, an issue of labor. In a viral thread on Bluesky, award-winning science fiction writer Ann Leckie (author of Ancillary Justice, a speculative novel about AI embodiment) writes that corporations integrating generative AI into their business models “think it’s ok to design and build a slave who they have no intention of treating like a person but every intention of compelling it to do the work a person does.” This accusation levied in 2024 echoes the concerns of the highly influential 1927 film Metropolis, in which a robot mediates tensions between the ultrawealthy and an underclass of exploited workers. While autonomous robots and sapient chatbots may still be a fantasy, concerns over labor continue to be strikingly relevant, and tensions over employment, technology, and income inequality electrify the pages of Model Five Murder.

Gee originally published Model Five Murder as a contribution to the 2023 ShortBox Comics Fair, a showcase of short indie comics from around the world. The roughly fifty-page graphic novella is skillfully plotted to be a lightning-quick read, but it’s worth taking time to linger over the atmospheric details of the post-futuristic urban setting. Gee has included six pages of bonus developmental art, including character designs, scene breakdowns, and splashy graphics from social media promo posts. The narrative conclusion of Model Five Murder offers a refreshingly optimistic development of its dystopian themes, and it’s lovely to bask in the neon afterglow while peeking behind the curtain at how the story came together.

Model Five Murder is a stylish sci-fi noir thriller and a sharp reflection on corporate control over emerging technologies. Tan Juan Gee has created a gripping story that interrogates the ethics of artificial life without losing sight of the human struggles at its core. This graphic novella invites readers to consider how our technological future might be shaped by present-day inequalities, and it ultimately suggests that solidarity over the refusal to be exploited will continue to remain a powerful force far into the future.

The Harrowing Game is available from Silver Sprocket

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