Martyr Loser King
By Saul Williams, Art by Morgan Sorne (23 St., 2026)

Synopsis

Can you name the ghost in your machine? The precious ore coltan can be found in every cell phone and computer on earth. And in a small East African country, both the Black population and the land are exploited for this precious resource—the people as a source of cheap, expendable labor; the land as a mining site and international dumping ground for defunct technology. Yet from the rubble, creativity and rebellion rise. An encounter between a miner and an otherworldly stranger named Neptune results in the birth of a hacker named MartyrLoserKing, and the launch of a global cyberattack. Their plan will rock the world to its foundations, upend centuries of institutional abuse, and, perhaps, usher in a new age of understanding. Steeped in mythology and history and inspired by present-day events, this cyberpunk fable from visionary poet, musician, and director Saul Williams is both a cautionary tale and a hopeful vision of the future.

In Martyr Loser King, Saul Williams returns with what can only be described as a “WORD”; an ethereal message tailored perfectly for long-time fans seeking his signature, boundary-pushing depth. This cyberpunk fable—set in a Burundian coltan-mining region that has become a dumping ground for the world’s tech waste—is classic Saul Williams. Through the story of an exploited coltan miner by the name of Matalusa (who transforms into a global hacker using the handle Martyr_Loser_King), Williams delivers an ambitious exploration of pseudo-religiosity that draws sharp, fascinating parallels between religion and modern technology, creating a digital-age mythology where the virtual and the spiritual collide.

The Iconoclast at Work

Williams performs at his absolute best when he leans into his role as an iconoclast, aggressively challenging traditional belief systems and dismantling sacred imagery. Throughout the narrative, he uses striking visual parallels to reshape religious tradition.

For instance, in one of the book’s numerous monologues, a fortune teller draws parallels between Moses’s interaction with God and the mining of coltan in Africa. “Moses came down from the mountain. Now that mountain is a mine and those precious tablets are worth more than the hands that hold them.”

An even sharper example lies in the very title of the book, Martyr Loser King, which acts as an irreverent play on the name of Martin Luther King Jr. while serving as a variation of the main character’s hacker alias. The true intent behind this subversive wordplay, however, remains ambiguous. Is Williams genuinely forcing the reader to confront how society constructs and tears down its sacred figures, or is this merely a provocative ploy to grab the reader’s attention by defacing cultural and spiritual icons? This constant waffling between the sacred and at times profane puts the reader in a spin cycle carried on throughout the book.

In addition, the art of Morgan Sorne does all it can to keep up with Williams’s frantic storytelling. In his attempt to be as provocative as the author, the illustrations in the book often defy the rules of traditional sequential art with borderless splash pages and monochromatic color schemes. The art works best when Sorne creates scenes in a digital plane of existence that transforms the characters into glowing, super-hero like characters; imagine Tron meets the Wiz.

The Celebrity Comic Curse

After 100 or so pages the narrative begins to buckle under the weight of Williams’ exhaustive commentary. It’s what I feared most when I first heard of the book; that Williams would enter the comics medium with the air that they were re-inventing it. While his creative genius is undeniable, translating the chaotic, poetic energy of a digital revolution into a functional graphic narrative proves to be more than both Williams and Sorne could handle, a typical pitfall for celebrities who enter the comics medium.

Although I appreciate the attempt, Martyr Loser King doesn’t reach the high bar set by other Afro-Futurist classics. Each of its central ideas — Africa as the center of a technology-driven future, Black people evolving into god-like beings, a convincing dystopian landscape — has been executed more effectively in titles such as New Masters, Infinitum, and Parable of the Sower.

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