Utopia (comic)

"You think I want Utopia? Utopia was just bait. A story about a little girl who against all odds battled her way home. Your very own hero's journey."

- Katherine Milner to Jessica Hyde, "Stay Alive, Jessica Hyde"

Utopia is a comic which is the follow-up to Dystopia, a cult comic. It is said to contain information which predicts viral outbreaks and features the character of Jessica Hyde. As with Dystopia, it was written and illustrated by Jessica Hyde's father.

History
Only the original manuscript of Utopia is known to exist. When a young couple, Ethan Lander and Olivia, discover the manuscript in a house left to Olivia by her grandfather, they decide to sell it at a comics convention called Fringecon, not realizing just what exactly it is that they have. The mention of the comic immediately attracts the attention of a group of fans - Ian Ackerman, Becky Todd, Grant Bishop, Samantha J. and Wilson Wilson - who have an online discussion board regarding Dystopia and who have long awaited Utopia ' s release.

Olivia and Ethan set up a private room at Fringecon where they see bidders for the comic individually. They allow each bidder to see the cover of the comic and a single page. Samantha J. sets up a strategy of each of them bidding only $500 for the comic in order to drive down interest, but secretly tells Olivia and Ethan not to sell and that she can get them $6,000. However, a man named Phillip Carson walks away with the comic instead after offering them $20,000 to leave with it immediately. The comic is later stolen from him by a boy named Grant Bishop. Additionally, two assassins named Arby and Rod come to the hotel where Frigecon is being held with the intent of killing anyone who has seen it. They kill Carson, as well as Olivia and Ethan's entire group, but are thwarted in killing those of the online discussion group, as Grant manages to elude them and the others have already left the hotel.

In the end, Jessica Hyde takes the Utopia manuscript with her to Home. There, she enters her childhood house, where she meets Katherine Milner, who reveals that she is not an agent of Homeland Security as she had claimed, but is in fact the head of Home itself. She tells Hyde that she's parted ways with Kevin Christie, as the two of them have "different definitions of what Utopia means." Hearing this, Hyde tosses the pages of Utopia out the house's window, where they are gathered by children below. Milner then reveals that she was never really interested in the Utopia manuscript, that it was only bait to get Hyde to return to Home. She then fights Hyde, rendering her unconscious, before heading to the house's basement and telling a man there, who is sketching pages of a new comic in the style of Utopia, that she has his daughter.

Behind the scenes

 * In the original British version of Utopia, its equivalent is the second edition of The Utopia Experiments.
 * Both the Utopia comic and Dystopia were illustrated by João Ruas.
 * Whereas both Dystopia and Utopia appear as actual comics within the U.S. remake, The Utopia Experiments was only referenced within the original British version, but not actually seen. Gillian Flynn, creator of the remake, described this as a deliberate choice, stating that she wanted viewers to know why the characters were obsessed with the comic, both because of the secret clues hidden within and its beauty. She contacted Ruas after seeing his illustrations for Bill Willingham's Fables.