Blade Runner 2039: Titan Comic Series Overview

Blade Runner 2039 is a twelve-issue Titan Comics series written by Mike Johnson and Mellow Brown and drawn by Andres Guinaldo, published with Alcon Publishing from December 2022 to April 2024. Set ten years after Blade Runner 2029, it followed the retired blade runner Aahna "Ash" Ashina as adult Cleo Selwyn returned to Los Angeles to find Isobel, while Niander Wallace sent the replicant blade runner Luv and an Ash copy named Rash after them. Its twelve issues were told in three four-issue arcs, Luv in issues 1 to 4, Upgrade in issues 5 to 8 and Ash in issues 9 to 12.

The Story

Luv

Luv Confronts Tabitha At The Stall

Early one morning in 2039, three young women argued at a crowded Los Angeles food court over whether they would still be friends if one of them turned out to be a replicant. The question ended when Luv walked up and singled out Tabitha Rens. Tabitha recognized a blade runner and ran while her friends threw themselves at Luv, who fended them off and chased her into a meat locker. After a brief scuffle Luv snapped Tabitha's neck, and the young replicant Lexi, one of the friends, watched the killing in horror before slipping away.

Luv Leads The Blade Runner Unit

At LAPD headquarters, the Blade Runner Unit heard that 71 percent of all reported replicants had been retired and that Luv had more retirements than any of them. The human officers made no secret of their distrust, and Luv was moved to an office of her own. On patrol she found Officer Mills harassing a man outside his sector, subdued him and threatened to report him while he begged her not to. In a waiting spinner, Jamison relayed a message from Niander Wallace, who praised her as his benchmark and ordered her to find the replicant copy of Alexander Selwyn's late wife.

Ash Waits On Catalina

Lexi went looking for transplant eyes to trade for passage out of the city. The scientist who supplied them asked for nothing, knowing she was on her way to the Ferryman, who guided hunted replicants to safety. She met his people at Hermosa Beach and crossed the water to Catalina. There the retired blade runner Aahna "Ash" Ashina waited alone on the rocky shore. Ash told the girl to just call her Ash and asked whether she had brought the eyes, which were the fare for Lexi's escape and something Ash badly needed for herself.

Ash Brings Lexi To The Trailer

Ash flew Lexi to a remote trailer and drew her gun on the stranger inside, until Freysa calmed her and introduced him as Sapper, who had served with her in the Off-world wars. Ash and Freysa then implanted Lexi's eyes in themselves. Freysa had lost an eye to Yotun, and Ash's own were failing to the disease that was also attacking her spine and lungs. Freysa pointed out that Ash had once sold replicant parts and now needed them to see. Ash told her about Wallace's replicant blade runner and left for the city to warn others.

Hythe Defeats Luv

Reprimanded over the complaint from Mills, Luv left for Santa Barbara on Wallace's orders. At Selwyn's former home she was met by the Nexus-8 butler Clarence and by the owner, Penelope, who claimed a special exemption to the Nexus-8 ban and said she had bought the house after Selwyn died. When Luv tried to search the house, Clarence drew a gun and Penelope attacked. During the fight Penelope revealed that she was an older replicant who had worked for Selwyn. She left Luv beaten in the fountain, and Clarence called her by her real name, Hythe.

Cleo Returns To Los Angeles

While Luv lay beaten in Santa Barbara, Ash reached Los Angeles to warn the replicants she still protected that a replicant blade runner was now working the streets. On the same rainy night, an adult Cleo Selwyn walked through the crowds under a sea of umbrellas and climbed into a cab. Cleo was Alexander Selwyn's daughter, raised Off-world by the replicant Isobel, and she had come back to Earth because Isobel had vanished. Neither woman yet knew that Wallace had sent Luv after the same replicant.

Ash Visits Captain Wojciech

Wallace's men collected the injured Luv from the house, and Niander Wallace told her the attack proved that Hythe was hiding what he wanted. Hythe told Clarence that she held the most important of Selwyn's records and would take them into the city. Ash, meanwhile, visited her former captain, Lydia Wojciech, in the hedged gardens of a nursing home. When Ash described the new replicant blade runner, Wojciech advised her to leave Luv alone and to stay away from Wallace, a man who saw himself as a prophet.

Cleo Finds Ash At The Noodle Bar

Ash went from the nursing home to a noodle bar, and there Cleo Selwyn found her and told her that Isobel had disappeared. Ash took Cleo to her hotel room, which was booked under the alias Ms. Calhoun, and told her to stay put while she went back into the city. At the precinct, a superior told Luv to increase her efficiency, and she promised that she would. Ash had no idea yet that the alias would lead Wallace's blade runner straight to Cleo's door.

Hythe Gives Ash Selwyn's Research

Ash met Hythe at a diner, where Hythe entrusted her with Alexander Selwyn's research on a disk and warned her not to let Wallace get it. Moments later a shot rang out and barely missed Hythe. The two of them disabled the gunmen, and Hythe concluded that she had been followed from Santa Barbara. While Ash dealt with the shooters, Luv tracked Cleo to the hotel. She rang Cleo's room with her gun drawn and said she had questions for her, leaving Cleo alone with Wallace's blade runner at the door.

The Disk Reveals Wallace's Fertility Plan

Ash took the disk to the twins Cas and Pol, who lay wired into reclining chairs beneath two giant screens showing their eyes. They had decrypted it for her and accepted a fish snack as payment. They told her it held research that Selwyn had carried out with former Tyrell personnel. The work had involved making multiple copies of Isobel, and it had come close to producing replicant fertility. Ash now understood why Wallace wanted both the research and Isobel herself, and why he had given the case to Luv.

Spinner Crash Past The Seawall

Luv had traced Cleo through the alias Ms. Calhoun, which had been Isobel's maiden name. She held Cleo at gunpoint, but Ash walked in and reminded her that a replicant blade runner could not kill humans without wrecking Wallace's experiment. Ash offered her a disk and claimed it held the research. Luv left to authenticate it, and Ash told Cleo the disk was blank. The two fled by spinner with Luv close behind, and Ash lost her at the Sepulveda Sea Wall before they surfaced at Hermosa Beach.

Wallace Unveils Rash

At Hermosa Beach, Ash told Taki that she was closing the railroad, then took Cleo to the camp. Freysa warned that Luv's investigation had closed the escape routes for Sapper and Lexi, and she urged Ash to destroy Selwyn's research. Cleo shaved her head and said she suspected that Isobel had gone to San Francisco, where the original Isobel had family. Niander Wallace, disappointed by Luv's failure, gave her a partner in a replicant copy of Ash named Rash.

Upgrade

Wallace Gifts Luv To The LAPD

Upgrade opened with a flashback to 2038. Speaking to senior Los Angeles Police Department officials, Niander Wallace recalled the Nexus-6, 7 and 8 models as the fallen creations of an imperfect creator. He presented the obedient Nexus-9 Luv to them as a gift and asked them to use her as a test for replicant blade runners. Back in 2039, Wallace showed Luv that Rash would obey any command except an order to kill a human, and he sent the pair after Isobel and Selwyn's research.

Ash And Freysa Argue Over The Research

At the camp, Ash and Freysa argued beneath a full moon over what to do with Selwyn's research. Ash suggested that they use it themselves, since it held the secret of replicant reproduction. Freysa found the idea obscene, because it would mean building new replicants with that ability. The argument ended abruptly when Cleo asked about leaving for San Francisco. The two women set off north in a truck, leaving Freysa and Sapper behind and believing that Lexi had stayed at the camp as well.

Highway Raiders Wound Cleo

On the road north a tire blew, and Ash went looking for a nearby town. A band of raiders opened fire on the truck and closed in on the two women. Their leader sent his man Francis to check the back, where Lexi had been hiding since they left the camp. Lexi shot Francis through the head, and every raider was killed in the firefight that followed. Ash scolded Lexi for stowing away, but the argument stopped when Cleo weakly called out and reached for her, wounded in the shooting.

A Replicant Treats Cleo's Wound

Ash cradled Cleo in the truck until Lexi came back with news that she had found someone willing to help. A farmer took the three of them in, treated Cleo's wound and warned them about raiders and storms further north. In Redondo Beach, Luv and Rash questioned Taki, who lied that Ash and Cleo had gone to Mexico. Rash knew he was lying but let it go and suggested they look for Isobel instead. At the farm, Cleo woke wanting to resume the search, and Ash decided to go on alone and leave her with Lexi.

Luv And Rash Question Hollis

In the Hollywood Hills, Luv and Rash visited Hollis, who had worked for Alexander Selwyn for seven years, and Luv admired the view from his mansion. He gave them nothing useful about Isobel or about Selwyn's hopes of making replicants reproduce. Hythe, however, had expected Wallace's blade runners to work through Selwyn's former scientists and had been lying in wait inside. She stepped out with a gun, held both blade runners at gunpoint and told them she meant to remove Wallace as a threat to her once and for all.

Rash Retires Hythe

Hythe demanded information, but the two blade runners attacked her. In the brief fight that followed, Rash fired a bullet into Hythe's chest and killed her. It was Rash's first retirement, and she gave Hollis a moment to collect himself before the questioning resumed. At the farmhouse, Ash set out alone for San Francisco and found the farmer holding a gun on her. He had worked out who she was, and he told her that he was a Nexus-6 she had hunted years before.

Ash Hunts Mack In 2018

In a 2018 flashback, a younger Ash cornered the Nexus-6 Mack on a rooftop and read out his model number, N6MCK-22503, and his record as a construction worker on Titan who had been missing for three months. She shot him off the roof and told local children they could salvage his parts. Mack survived the fall and attacked them until he realized they were only children, then fled into the city. Twenty-one years later he was the farmer now holding Ash at gunpoint.

Ash And Mack Enter San Francisco

Mack suspected that Ash had come to finish the job. She told him she had changed, and when Lexi crept up behind him with a gun of her own, Mack saw that Ash now protected replicants. He volunteered to go with her to find Isobel and explained how he had ended up on the farm. As they neared San Francisco they rode out a small earthquake, a common event that had left the city mostly deserted, its shoreline crowded with beached ships.

Rash Shoots Mack

In the city, Ash and Mack went to the house of Isobel's relatives and began to search it for her. The house was not empty. Rash and Luv had worked out where Isobel might go and had been waiting there for Ash to arrive. Rash stepped out with her gun drawn, greeted Ash with a wry "nice to meet me" and shot Mack before he could react, ending the issue with the blade runners standing over him and Ash trapped between them.

Rash Breaks Ash's Finger

As Mack lay wounded, Ash knelt beside him and faced the two blade runners. She recognized Rash as a copy of herself, with a healthy body and none of her memories. Luv and Rash demanded to know where Isobel was. Ash said she did not know and asked them to let her and Mack go. Rash answered by breaking one of Ash's fingers, then broke one of her own out of curiosity to see what it felt like.

Mack Sacrifices Himself

Isobel arrived in the blade runners' own spinner, which she had hijacked, and opened fire on them before crashing it into the house. As Ash ran for the spinner, Mack gave her covering fire and shot Rash in the shoulder before he was shot dead. Luv grabbed the spinner as it lifted away but lost her grip and fell into the ocean. Ash and Isobel went to Mack's farm and reunited with Cleo and Lexi. Isobel explained that Wallace's people had tracked her to Arcadia, so she had quietly led them away from Cleo.

Ash Decides To Kill Wallace

Ash suggested finding a new colony for Cleo and Isobel, but Isobel believed that Wallace would follow them anywhere. Niander Wallace told Luv and Rash that their failure did not matter, because he expected Isobel to come to him. The group took a tractor back to Freysa. There Ash concluded that Cleo and Isobel would only be safe if Wallace died, and she resolved to return to Los Angeles and prepare to kill him. Wallace listened in on the whole conversation remotely.

Ash

Gaff Tells Ash Wojciech Died In Peace

Ash went back to the retirement home to ask Lydia Wojciech for guidance, but the hologram at the reception desk could not find her in the facility's system. An elderly resident told Ash that Wojciech had died a natural and peaceful death. He introduced himself as Gaff, a former blade runner who knew Ash by reputation, and he guessed that she meant to go after Niander Wallace. Gaff advised her that the only way to get close enough was to bring Wallace what he wanted. As she left, he gave her an origami frog.

Ash Traps Rash

At a noodle stand, Rash joined Ash, admitted she had followed her from the retirement home and claimed she only wanted to learn about the woman she was copied from. Ash led her to a hideout where Sapper waited. Rash attacked him, and he reluctantly fought back until Lexi brought her down with a tranquilizer. Under interrogation by Ash, Freysa, Isobel and Cleo, Rash revealed that Wallace was close to replicant fertility and believed Isobel was the missing piece. Ash ordered Rash to help her reach Wallace.

Ash Finds Cal Moreaux

The LAPD, unimpressed by Luv's results, put her contract under review and restricted her to department orders. After she lashed out at a taunting officer she was sent home for the day, and Wallace ordered her to find Rash. Ash, meanwhile, had an idea for reaching Wallace more easily. She went to a club and found Cal Moreaux, the LAPD's first blade runner, lounging in a red armchair with a drink. Moreaux had ties to companies that did business with the Wallace Corporation.

Luv Tracks Rash Downtown

Luv tracked her missing partner to downtown Los Angeles. In a littered street she questioned a young boy, who told her he had seen a skinny lady with a coat like hers fight a big man. He said the woman had lost and been carried away. From his account Luv worked out that Rash had been taken to a hideout outside the city. At that hideout, Isobel fed the bound Rash, who learned that Isobel had come back to Earth because it was the last place anyone would search for her.

Cal Opens A Door To Wallace

At a private building he owned, Cal Moreaux looked out over the night city while Ash asked him for help in reaching Niander Wallace. He had connections with companies that worked with the Wallace Corporation, but he warned her that Wallace rarely left its headquarters. Moreaux owed Ash a favor, however, and he agreed to put himself at risk to repay it. He promised to find her a way in, knowing that if Wallace learned who had helped her, the debt would cost him dearly.

Rash Knocks Out Luv

Rash broke free of her restraints and took Isobel hostage. She told the group that she had no loyalty to Wallace and wanted to be free like them. Luv then arrived and ordered Rash to put Isobel in her spinner. Rash refused, turned on Luv and knocked her out with a kick. With Wallace's first replicant blade runner unconscious at her feet, Rash asked again whether she could join them. Luv became the group's prisoner, and Ash found herself with an unwanted ally.

Wallace Learns Luv Is Suspended

Cal Moreaux gave Ash directions to one of Wallace's suppliers and warned her that this contact was dangerous. At the same time, an LAPD captain called Niander Wallace to say that the department was suspending Luv and assessing the replicant blade runner program. Wallace replied that the police lacked the ability to judge his creation and said he would discuss the matter with Luv himself. He did not know that she was now a prisoner of the people he was hunting.

Daisy Sets Hanii On Ash And Rash

Ash still distrusted Rash, but Freysa urged her to take the copy along as Ash's illness worsened. Their target was Daisy, Wallace's boyhood nursemaid, who now supplied him with organic matter. Ash and Rash pressed her to set up a meeting with Wallace under false pretenses. Daisy instead set her pleasure model Hanii on them. Hanii attacked Rash, and the fight turned only when Ash restrained Daisy with her cane and made clear that she was ready to kill her.

Wallace Meets Ash's Double

Freysa questioned the captive Luv and suggested that her loyalty came from love for her creator, which Luv denied. Niander Wallace then arrived for the meeting at a ruined Tyrell building, where a pendulum still swung over a stone well. He told the empty room that he would restore awe to his species. Luv was thrown in at his feet, and a woman who looked like Ash stepped out with a gun. Wallace said he had studied her records and could cure her, unaware that he was facing Rash.

Rash Fights Wallace's Security

Rash, still disguised as Ash, declined Wallace's offer to cure the illness. Niander Wallace said he would yield the floor to his associates, and a squad of identical security guards closed around her. Rash fought them off with gun and fists, holding the room long enough for the plan to work. Every guard shared the same face and the same grey uniform, and none of them could pin her down. The real Ash, meanwhile, was waiting in Wallace's own spinner, ready to take him somewhere of her choosing once he left the building.

Ash Trades Selwyn's Research

Ash took Niander Wallace to the private sanctum of Eldon Tyrell, where Tyrell had been murdered twenty years earlier, now a monument to his hubris. There Wallace made his offer to the real Ash, but she refused the cure. Instead she gave him Selwyn's research in exchange for leaving Cleo and Isobel alone. She told him she hoped he succeeded in letting replicants reproduce, and that he would never perfect obedience. The trade followed Gaff's advice to bring Wallace what he wanted.

Ash And Freysa On The Rooftop

Ash said goodbye to Cleo and Isobel, who were returning to the colonies with Rash as their protection. Ash then joined Freysa on a rooftop above the city and remarked that Wallace had no idea of the future he was about to create. She said nothing about the cure she had turned down or about how little time her illness had left her. She was content to spend that time with Freysa, and the series ended with the two of them together above the lights of Los Angeles.

Main Characters

• Aahna "Ash" Ashina was a retired LAPD blade runner whose failing spine drove her choices, who helped Cleo find Isobel and who traded Selwyn's research instead of taking Wallace's cure.
• Cleo Selwyn was Alexander Selwyn's daughter, returned from the colonies as an adult to find Isobel, the replicant who had raised her.
• Isobel was the replicant based on Selwyn's late wife, hunted by Wallace for what her line might reveal about replicant fertility.
• Luv was Wallace's replicant blade runner assigned to recover Isobel intact, who killed Tabitha, was beaten by Hythe in Santa Barbara, and was later knocked out and captured by Rash.
• Rash was a Wallace replicant copy of Ash, who retired Hythe, turned on Luv, posed as Ash before Wallace and left Earth as Cleo and Isobel's escort.
• Niander Wallace was the industrialist who legalized new replicants, offered Ash a spine cure for Isobel, and took Selwyn's research in trade.
• Freysa was Ash's lover and Underground partner, who shared Lexi's transplant eyes with Ash and stayed with her after the Wallace meeting.
• Hythe was an older replicant who had worked for Selwyn, beat Luv at his Santa Barbara home under the name Penelope, gave his research to Ash and was retired by Rash.
• Mack was a Nexus-6 Ash had hunted in 2018, who sheltered her as a farmer, went with her to San Francisco and died covering her escape.
• Cal Moreaux was the first blade runner, who owed Ash a favor and pointed her to Wallace's supplier Daisy.
• Lydia Wojciech was Ash's former LAPD captain, who warned her away from Wallace and had died peacefully by the time Ash returned for her advice.
• Gaff was a retired blade runner living in the same home, who told Ash of Wojciech's death and advised her to bring Wallace what he wanted.
• Tabitha was a replicant whom Luv chased from a food court and killed in a meat locker.
• Lexi was Tabitha's young replicant friend, who escaped to Catalina with the transplant eyes Ash and Freysa needed and later saved Ash and Cleo from raiders.
• Alexander Selwyn was a Tyrell-era industrialist whose private lab and fertility research drove Wallace's case.

Behind The Scenes

Mike Johnson and Mellow Brown wrote the twelve issues, with Andres Guinaldo on art, Marco Lesko on colors, Jim Campbell on lettering and David Leach as editor. Michael Green, co-writer of Blade Runner 2049, was credited as a creative consultant. The first issue went on sale on 7 December 2022 and the last on 17 April 2024. Titan collected the run in three trade paperbacks, Blade Runner 2039: Luv Vol. 1 (issues 1 to 4) in September 2023, Upgrade Vol. 2 (issues 5 to 8) in February 2024 and Ash Vol. 3 (issues 9 to 12) in August 2024.

Cover A of the first issue was painted by Junggeun Yoon, and the series also carried covers by Veronica Fish, Syd Mead, Butch Guice and others. The book continued Ash's story from Blade Runner 2019 and Blade Runner 2029, and it placed Luv years before her role in the 2049 film. The three paperbacks were boxed together in a slipcase set in July 2025, and on 11 November 2025 Titan released Blade Runner 2039: The Complete Series Omnibus, a 336-page hardcover of all twelve issues. The Blade Runner canon guide and the Blade Runner timeline list how the comics fit beside the films and shorts.

Closing Thoughts

Blade Runner 2039 closed Titan's Ash trilogy by putting her against Wallace's first blade runner and against a copy of herself. It turned Cleo's search for Isobel into a trade over replicant fertility, and it left Ash with Freysa rather than with Wallace's cure. The series tied the comics forward into the world of Blade Runner 2049 while keeping Ash's last choices human and finite. That choice closed the Ash books on a human scale rather than on Wallace's corporate calendar.

External Sources

• Blade Runner 2039 at Titan Comics
• Blade Runner 2039: Upgrade at Titan Comics
• Blade Runner 2039: Ash at Titan Comics
• Blade Runner 2039: The Complete Series Omnibus at Titan Comics

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