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In a forgotten side story from The Matrix, Neil Gaiman, Bill Sienkiewicz & Gregory Ruth, an alien attack showed the bright side of the digital world.
In 1999, famed fantasy and comics writer Neil Gaiman teamed up with artists Bill Sienkiewicz and Gregory Ruth to jump into the world of The Matrix. Although it was only one of several short stories and comics produced in the lead-up to the film’s release, “Goliath” brought the idea of alien life into the franchise with a new protagonist whose world begins to fall apart as the simulation is attacked by an extra-terrestrial threat.
Leading up to the release of the original film, Neil Gaiman was one of a number of writers approached to create some kind of accompanying story for the film’s companion site when webcomics were starting to get more mainstream media attention. And for a technologically focused film like Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix, the nascent webcomics digital platform was an ideal medium.
Released the film’s opening weekend, “Goliath” opens by introducing its unnamed protagonist, a young man with a stable, uneventful job in a carpet warehouse who knows nothing of his world’s secret. On a day of no apparent importance, the simulation begins to fall apart around him, creating the illusion of his world melting before he is met by a strange face who tells him things will be up and running again soon. Without knowledge of the matrix itself, this moment is unsettling and plants an understandable doubt in the back of his mind as he tries to return to life.
The story jumps forward, following its protagonist almost a decade into the future and finding him with a job he likes and a failed marriage. Once again, the simulation begins to break down, trapping him in a seemingly endless loop of arriving at the same underground station until he is approached by the same stranger who reveals that only half an hour has passed from his perspective. The man goes on to tell him that the facility where he has spent his entire life is under attack by aliens, before returning him to his life confident in the knowledge that his world is not what it seems. He lives years like this before he is suddenly jolted back over a decade earlier and given the chance to join the air force, an opportunity that he was denied in his original life.
With his past lives only a palimpsest, he works his way up the ranks under the guidance of the mysterious man who had been watching him, eventually learning that he was bred specifically for the purpose of fighting the aliens in the real world. Although he never sees the aliens, he is able to defeat them and destroy their giant organic ship in space. With hours left of his life, he asks his caretaker to plug him back into the system and lives out his life the way he had always hoped it would g0.
Gaiman’s story is ironically more cinematic than the original film, and the introduction of aliens is a strange wrinkle in an otherwise faithful inclusion in this world. “Goliath” is an interesting thematic companion to the Wachowski’s film, as it presents a more romantic idea of the Matrix. In this situation, the calm it provides is framed as a release and not a prison. While the idea of aliens raises several exciting new questions, the promise of those ideas remains largely unexplored by the franchise.
Although “Goliath” and the other Matrix webcomics have been physically collected and reprinted a few times over the years, this story is still ultimately a tantalizing glimpse of a path the franchise didn’t take.
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