"Mr. Gerrard. My name is Miranda Zero, and you're on the Global Frequency."
Science fiction/espionage comic book series written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by a number of different artists. The 12 issues of the series were published by Wildstorm Productions from 2002-2004.
Each issue of the series had a different artist or artistic team. They included some of the best artists in the comics biz -- Chris Sprouse, Steve Dillon, Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry, David Lloyd, Lee Bermejo, Gene Ha, and plenty of others. Writer/artist Brian Wood created each of the covers.
Each issue of the series is a single self-contained story, focusing on the Global Frequency, a proactive, independent, international intelligence agency. There are 1,001 people on the Global Frequency, ranging from computer hackers, scientists, astronauts, and military specialists to burglars, memetic researchers, stage magicians, and parkour athletes. Every member of the Frequency has a special high-tech cell phone, and if it rings, they know they may be the only person on the planet who can save the world. The leader of the Global Frequency is Miranda Zero, a mysterious, hard-headed espionage op, and the dispatcher is a mohawked tech expert called Aleph.
Global Frequency has to deal with a number of crises, ranging from the mundane -- terrorists, kidnappings, bombs -- to the science fictional -- rogue cyborgs, black hole brain-bombs, alien brain-rewiring memes, city-destroying space weapons. Personally, I usually prefer the realism of the mundane threats, but Ellis writes the science fiction plots with entertaining and mind-melting audacity. The cyborgs here don't look like normal people with some chrome limbs -- you can't give someone a robot arm without also enhancing the shoulders, spine, torso, or really, the entire rest of their body. They've given up their human appearance, motivations, and psyches. This is science fiction with all the ugliness of reality fused in, and it makes the cinematic action of the plots even more thrilling.
And the series even got a television pilot a few years back -- a pilot that proved the power of the Internet as well as some of the web's serious limitations. The pilot was directed by Nelson McCormick and produced by Mark Burnett and Warren Ellis, with writer John Rogers serving as the showrunner. Josh Hopkins starred as Sean Flynn, an ex-cop and newcomer to Global Frequency, along with Jenni Baird as Dr. Katrina Finch, a scientific jack-of-all-trades. They were designed as the primary recurring characters to provide the audience viewpoint. The other stars included Aimee Garcia as Aleph, and Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero. Of all of them, Forbes was the real standout -- few actors have ever embodied a comic character better than Forbes as Zero.
The pilot was intended for the WB, but someone leaked the unaired pilot onto the Internet in the summer of 2005. It got downloaded a lot, and it was extremely popular. But Warner Brothers was so annoyed by the leak that they refused to approve the series. This wasn't just distressing to fans of the comic series -- many of the actors and crew on the pilot felt that the show had the potential to be something really phenomenal, and they were just as upset about it as anyone.
You can still find the pilot on various file-sharing sites, and occasionally, someone uploads it to YouTube. If you can find it, it's worth watching.