Memetic #2

Hope is in sight, but don't look at the sloth.

Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Eryk Donovan 
Publisher: BOOM!

Memetic is proving itself to be a modern day horror classic, powered at its very heart by the simple idea that we should be scared of the internet. 

Tynion ups the emotional risks and rewards in this day two of the end of the world, and it totally pays off. This story treads so dangerously close to waxing just too poetic and then straddles that line and ruins all of your preconcieved notions about an end of the world story in the best ways possible. Aaron is scared, Ryan is scared, I'm scared and you should be scared. This spattering of vignettes in a way, this tale of humans in a sitatution so devoid of basic humanity, it's darkly beautiful. Tynion understands people at their best and worst, he understands how fear works and he understands how truly scared we should be of the things we rely on every day. Each second spent thinking just about the premise of this book makes it scarier and scarier, so dangerously close to our own reality. It's a meditation on the things we take for granted and how they can destroy us by changing even slightly. The plot twist at the end, too, drives exactly that home, the things that destroy us can keep changing, morphing, haunting us in ways we didn't know possible. It's really a thinking piece, one that forces you to look differently at everything around you for better or worse. I didn't originally think Tynion and Donovan would be able to pull of this concise and topical of a story in just three issues. I was wrong.


Donovan does his work well, too. He creates and molds this dark, broken world into a terrifying but very real thing. His on point references to internet culture and technological currents are things that may break the tone of the book in other comics but work perfectly here. That sloth is haunting, a perfected image of the darkness that can be lurking just beneath a lot of our colorful and loved imagery today like Mickey Mouse. The screamers, terrifying. The people, scared. The world, breaking. Donovan knows how to compliment Tynion perfectly and together they're creating quite the spectacle. 

This is only issue two, this is only day two, but it's the end of the world as we know it.