Rating: WORTHY!
The odd thing about this graphic novel is that it came without any front or end material whatsoever - the first screen is the first page of the story, not the cover! The last page of the story is the last page of the entire thing. There isn't even anything to identify the creators! I know this is an advance review copy, and I assume that will be all in place when the novel is finalized for publication, of course, but it's weird that there was nothing other than the guts.
Then this was a rather weird story throughout. I've never been a fan of the movie, The Fly (1958), based on a short story or the remake from 1986 (on which premises this novel builds), which I've never been inclined to watch despite the cast. The science made no sense whatsoever in the movies, and that same problem exists here, despite the story being tarted-up with all kinds of pseudo-scientific gabble.
That said, and despite the fact that I am not find of sci-fi stories that utterly mangle science, I found that if I was willing to leave science at the door and enjoy the art by Menton3 rather than the story by by Brandon Seifert, it was a pleasant read. I loved the art work, and the fact that the artists used the entire page. There will be no trees sacrificed to barren wastes of white space if this goes to a significant print run.
The story here is set several years after the original, and changes the back-story somewhat. In this version, the son of the original fly experimenter (who never existed in the originals) is "infected" with fly DNA and is living on the edge of humanity, trying to find his way back. He has a girlfriend who loves him and a lab assistant who has a crush on him.
He's trying to find a way to separate out human genes and fly genes! Good luck with that since there really aren't "human genes" and "fly genes"! Genes don't have specific ties to any given species any more than the rectangular Lego™ building blocks have ties to a specific thing you build. Most of our genes we share in common with other animals. Genes are simply genes, and we share so many of ours with other species - less and less, admittedly, the more distantly-related we are - that it would be a nightmare trying to isolate a few and extract them.
We share, for example, 60% of our DNA with the fruit fly, which I think is the species of fly featured in this story. The reason for this is not that we're part fruit fly or that the fly is part human, but that we both have a lot of things in common at the cellular level, even though we are very different in gross anatomy (which is why the transformation depicted here couldn't take place, although it has more likelihood of doing so than ever the transformation in the 1958 move had of happening!).
Despite the huge overall differences between us and flies, we still have cells and they still have to take in oxygen and nutrients, and output energy. This same process has been going on for literally billions of years, ever since our ancestors were unicellular organisms. It works! There was no 'evolutionary pressure' to change that, even as pressure to slowly transform and change from one kind of organism to another has run rampant over the intervening epochs.
Why having fly DNA in your genome would give a human super powers and make them sexually libidinous remains a mystery, but this was doubtlessly cribbed from the 1986 movie which evidently depicted something similar.
The artwork though, was gorgeous. It was soft and ultra realistic, in eerie shades reminiscent of watercolor art. I recommend the comic based largely on that, but also a on the story which, if you close your inquiring mind down somewhat, can be borne and even enjoyed. I found it intriguing that the gas masks people wore to prevent transmission of infection made them look more like flies than ever the inevitable mutations made those who were infected look like flies. Why they thought that genetic material could be transmitted through the air and infect them was a mystery, but still...!
Although this is a largely male-centric comic, I loved how the two main females - pretty much the only females in it - were depicted, and I'm not talking about the art work here (although many male, and even some female, readers may appreciate that), but about their motivations and their behaviors. It was nice to see them have minds of their own and strong motivations. Although those motivations were, sadly, largely tied to the main male character, there was a bit of a twist at the end which restored the balance somewhat. It was also nice that there were no simplistic black and white issues here. Everything was muddied and shaded and nuanced - a facet of this story which was beautifully reflected in the artwork. That made a pleasant change. Overall, I think this is a worthy read.
