With the Cyberpunk 2077 game now launched (not smoothly, to say the least – on consoles in any case), it’s the perfect time to fill in some of the detail in the rich world it’s set in, by checking out Cullen Bunn and Miguel Valderrama’s excellent tie-in series, Trauma Team.

Following on from the devastating events in issue one, Nadia – a member of militarised-EMTs-for-hire Trauma Team – returns to the field and ends up on a job working to protect the person responsible for the slaughter of her colleagues. Cleverly touching on themes such as medical ethics and PTSD, it’s been a series of intense, violent action scenes, punctuated by flashbacks filling in the details for readers as we go.

That continues here, with a heart-wrenching sequence that comments on the situation facing plenty of people in the present day: that of healthcare being out of reach. It’s a level of depth that is cleverly interwoven into the violence and gore; helping to give the action a purpose and the story something vital to say about the modern world, which cyberpunk (small c, as in the genre rather than the game – though the TTRPG itself has never been short on relevant social and political commentary) has always been very good at.

It really is a compelling and brilliantly crafted series; with one issue left to go, I’m sure that things are going to come to a very messy end for at least one of the main characters. Knowing cyberpunk as a genre, it could mean the end for all of them.