'Non-Humans' explores a dark sci-fi side of living toys

• Glen Brunswick teams with Whilce Portacio for new sci-fi series "Non-Humans."
• In the year 2041, toys, mannequins and inanimate objects have a life of their own.
• The real L.A. was in the back of Portacio's mind for inspiration, but more an extrapolation of the city.

Non-Humans is a toy story different from most others.

Like Blade Runner by way of Pixar, the new Image Comics sci-fi series by writer Glen Brunswick and artist Whilce Portacio, one of Image's founding partners, imagines a future Los Angeles where the androids are instead toys, mannequins and other familiar, inanimate objects personified by people.

Nearly 30 years into our own future, a disease has caused these things to be born of a person's DNA, with it most prevalent in adolescents. They're "a product of us" in that they take a piece of personality from their owners, according to Brunswick, and that means some of them are quite violent.

Because of this, the entire teenage population is required by law to take drugs to keep Non-Humans from overwhelming regular humans. "The Non-Humans have to be kept in their place, or eliminated," Brunswick says, "in order to maintain a more perfect union."

Detective Oliver Aimes is an L.A. cop circa 2041 on the hunt for a serial-killing Non-Human ventriloquist's puppet that killed his partner, and if that wasn't enough, Aimes has some repressed demons linked to the loss of his right eye that continually fuels his hatred toward the Non-Humans.

Aimes finds his new partner, Detective Eden, too young and attractive to be on the force, and much to his chagrin, she's a huge supporter of Non-Humans' civil rights.

Aimes' son also doesn't share his dad's hatred. He just so happens to be dating a N.H. who lives in East L.A. with a Goth doll and a stuffed mechanical dog that has built herself into a full-size robot from spare parts — a type of behavior "common among some of the Non-Humans that want to make themselves looks as close to human as possible," says Brunswick.

Needless to say, dad does not approve of the teen's relationship, but Aimes — and most of L.A. — has bigger problems.

"The whole city is about to explode in a race riot due to the assassination of one of the N.H. leaders," Brunswick says. "And a cadre of underworld N.H. mafia-type bad guys have their own devious agenda they're about to unleash. Not to mention, Aimes has unknown enemies on the force that would love to bring him to his knees.

"It's a character-driven thriller with an intense amount of conflict."

The concept for Non-Humans (debuting Wednesday) came from wanting to explore what seems a child's bedtime wish: to have their favorite toy and something they consider a friend come to life. But Brunswick takes it further, asking if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

"Children often fantasize about this," he says, "but the reality of that kind of situation could really be something much more sinister. The interesting thing we've come up with is that the characters that spark to life actually come from us. They don't just bust into existence as they are.

"In a sense they are born from our DNA in the same way a baby is born from its mother."

Brunswick's favorite film as a kid was Planet of the Apes, but he also grew up on classic Star Trek and Twilight Zone episodes. Those all influence Non-Humans as does The Sopranos for one of his and Portacio's villains.

"You just have to imagine Tony Soprano as a stuffed monkey — the mechanical kind that clangs the two cymbals together," Brunswick says.

Portacio loves science fiction, too, from films and TV to the novels of Asimov, Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. "It's hard-wired into my brain," he says. "Non-Humans gives me the opportunity to finally purge my system of all this stuff that's stuck inside my head."

To design their tweaked, sci-fi L.A. landscape, "Glen ran about in the sunshine snapping shots of L.A while I was chained to a drawing table doing the heavy lifting," Portacio quips.

One of the things they discussed early on was they wanted their L.A. to look enough like the real one that readers might recognize a few places, but make it vastly different "as if Hong Kong had moved into the L.A. skyline," Brunswick says.

Portacio developed the theory that the Non-Humans would take over the streets, while regular humans would populate the tall buildings and shopping malls.

"The Non-Humans would watch the humans with envy, from down below, wanting in some way to be part of the human race again," Brunswick says. "It was a nice piece of the world-building puzzle. Once he had that, he was off designing our extraordinary world."

L.A. was in the back of Portacio's mind for inspiration, the artist adds, "but it's more of an extrapolation of the city if parts were left to deteriorate and certain concentrated areas were focused on and built up.

"Thinking about where L.A. might go under these extreme circumstances has been the real driving force in my head."

One of the most interesting and eclectic areas is Plastic Town, a part of East L.A. that Brunswick compares to Las Vegas — a place that exists outside the rules of society and where humans and Non-Humans can find a common ground.

Buddy-The-Bear is a furry denizen of Plastic Town, and while he was originally to be a cute Non-Human that was preyed upon by scared humans to engender reader sympathy, Brunswick played him against type and made the former stuffed animal a hip drug dealer.

"He's become one of my favorite characters in the book so we've expanded his role," says Brunswick, who is also fond of Detective Medic, equal parts Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Spock. "He was a doctor's medical dummy that sparked to life and has become the only Non-Human detective on the force due to his incredible skill set."

The plan for Non-Humans is to begin with a four-issue miniseries, the writer says, but with so much prep time designing, world-building and setting up characters, "it would be almost impossible for us to leave it after only one story arc."

Adds Portacio: "We've built something really special here that completely fires up my imagination. It has me as excited as I felt back when Image Comics first began."