A sci-fi noir detective comic set somewhere near the 2060s written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Marcos Martin. Nominally a public notary, the enigmatic P.I. is discreet, professional, and unmatched in finding what his clients want. He's also deeply private and Properly Paranoid, given that being an "unlicensed investigator" in the modern day is a serious crime worthy of getting you thrown in jail for quite a while. Then one day a dame walks in with a simple job: dig up her sordid past so she can test if she covered her tracks properly or not.
Unfortunately, her past catches up with her before he can even begin. Now with her twin sister and former client demanding revenge, P.I. finds himself roped into a conspiracy of French assassins, billionaire moguls, and Bratty Half-Pint getaway drivers. Armed only with his Dreamcoat hoodie, a retro camera, and a ton of experience in the sordid underbelly of California, he'll have his hands full surviving, let alone digging into why his client was murdered.
This comic book contains examples of:
- Ambiguously Brown: What P.I. is described as. He's explicitly mixed race as well, as his grandfather is white as the driven snow while his mother is shown to be a darker shade of brown and known by various stereotypically American Black pseudonyms.
- Big Brother Is Watching: Reportedly illegal, to the point that librarians are treated to even harsher restrictions than modern doctors are with HIPAA. Recording people's searches in a way anyone can access is expressly illegal and has been ruled on multiple times to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Despite this, the federal government plans to hijack the Big Bad's plan at the end of the series, with one investigator offering that it's a Necessary Evil to fight terrorism while Raveena quotes Thomas Jefferson regarding liberty and safety.
- Bilingual Dialogue: The Big Bad speaks to his assassins in English while they only speak to him in French. Despite this, neither has any problems understanding each other.
- Bulletproof Vest: Everybody in the press wears them, from the cameramen to the investigators themselves. This notably saves a few different characters from dying.
- Comically Small Bribe: P.I. generally gets what he wants through bribes; however, he suspects that one of his contacts refusing to divulge information he asks for is a result of this. Whether it's true or not is ambiguous, as the person takes a moral stance on supporting privacy but is a long-time client and contact of P.I., so they clearly aren't that obsessed with privacy.
- Cool Mask: Every adult wears them in public, though not in private. P.I. and Raveena use them for their original purpose as disguises when they go out in public trying to dig up leads. P.I. normally eschews them, favoring a sort of racoon eye paint meant to resemble a domino mask, with his hood acting as his "second face".
- Domino Mask: Implied by P.I.'s eye makeup. He takes it off and puts it on several times in the series. Also notably inspired by a friend of his mother who was shown wearing a legitimate domino mask.
- Dead-Hand Shot: Used for the driver after P.I. and Raveena escape the car crash. The driver survives.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite hiring P.I. to track down his high-school sweetheart, one of P.I.'s clients refuses to abuse his position as a librarian to violate someone's privacy.
- Furry Fandom: Apparently common, though still something of a social faux pas in the new modern society. P.I.'s first client appears to be one, entering his office wearing a holographic tiger head.
- Future Slang: Private investigators are now synonymous with Paparazzi due to society's obsession with privacy. The police are now considered synonymous with the press, even being referred to as "the fourth estate". Nyms now refer to the names that people choose to describe themselves with once they become adults and are known to change frequently. Televisions have gone the way of Kleenex, with all models now being produced by the company Teevee.
- Gas Mask Mooks: The Big Bad's pair of French assassins.
- Gratuitous French: The French assassins almost exclusively speak French. Notably, they speak French even to characters who they need to interrogate and who tell them that they can't understand French — a point made more glaring given that they demonstrably can speak English.
- High Times Future: Marijuana is a brand of commercially available cigarette.
- Holographic Disguise: A rare case of Impossibly Cool Clothes in the new modern society. Everyone values their privacy, with adults generally hiding their identities behind a variety of masks, but the wealthiest individuals can afford fully programmable holograms to give them whatever appearance and voice modulation they want.
- Hypocrite: Everyone who complains that P.I.'s job involves violating people's constitutional privacy for his job is also a former or current employee or client of his.
- I Have Your Wife: Used by the bad guys on P.I. as a measure of stopping him from furthering his investigation. Unfortunately for them, they never actually get a chance to tell him this, ruining its effectiveness somewhat.
- Invisibility Cloak: P.I.'s Dreamcoat hoodie appears to project the surfaces on the opposite sides of itself to give the illusion of transparency. An investigator chasing after him refers to it as "old school camouflage", implying that there are legitimate invisibility cloaks in-universe.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The French assassins who murder at least a dozen people between them over the course of the series.
- Mushroom Samba: P.I. experiences one while recovering from his injuries at his grandfather's home.
- New Media Are Evil: Played both ways. P.I. opposes the "modern" new media, claiming that he doesn't even know how to turn a Teevee on, let alone operate it, and uses an "outdated" digital camera with an illegal zoom lens for most of his work. However, the Big Bad's end goal is a return to the Information Age, reestablishing the internet and connecting everyone via their Teevees with the ability to spy on one another in their most private moments. Several characters point out that this is a bad idea which they claim crippled society and resulted in a number of problems.
- The One That Got Away: The source of one of P.I.'s clients, tracking down his old high-school sweetheart in a world without any kind of social media or phone books.
- Private Detective: The titular P.I., or course. As the comic is set in the near future while also being a throwback to the classic tropes, it plays with a lot of the classic Private Detective and Noir tropes, set in a future near enough that there are people alive who know what a Zune is but far enough that most people think an ipod is an "old timey" phone.
- Propaganda Machine: Derisively what "the press" are acknowledged to be in-universe, hiding the details of their investigations while telling the public what they want to hear.
- Properly Paranoid: Society as a whole after the Internet's deepest secrets were leaked, called "the Flood". P.I. notably takes this even further, not owning any modern technology, with his most sci-fi gear being called "old school" in universe.
- Sinister Surveillance: Played with. P.I.'s job is theoretically the only version of this left after spying any kind was outlawed in the name of people's privacy. This is seen as a necessary evil in universe, with many decrying P.I. for violating others' privacy while simultaneously enlisting his services to violate people's privacy in the name of honesty. The Big Bad's ultimate goal is a version of this, reinstating the internet but hooking it up to everyone's TV and adding cameras to allow everyone to spy on everyone else, destroying their privacy entirely and replicating the leak at the end of the Information Age that saw everyone's data being leaked to the public.
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Technology Marches On: A major Running Gag and eventual plot point. P.I.'s grandfather is likely a millennial, as he's the only person who knows what a Zune is in the comic and has an array of outdated chargers to power up iPads, iPods, Zunes, and a plethora of other old technology that the bad guys all use because they're literally "dead technology" with the end of the Internet. - Two-Faced: Invoked by P.I.'s Dreamcoat Hoodie, which features a caricature of a rictus grin on the back of it, playing into the nature of everyone hiding their identity in the new modern day.
- Visual Pun: Raveena's sister wears a tiger hologram mask, but when her past catches up to her, she tries to tell the Big Bad that she didn't tell anyone anything and tries to ask him to leave after he breaks into her house. Despite knowing how dangerous he is, she lets him get in close and makes no effort to defend herself. She's ultimately a Paper Tiger.
- The Wall Around the World: The government's response to Global Warming was to build a massive wall to hold the rising tide at bay. Then the internet broke and, as the Big Bad declares, America became insular and shut off from the needs and suffering of the rest of the world.
