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Eve #5 Review: "There's No Future In Despair"

Published Sun, 12 Sep 2021 09:02:10 -0500

With an immaculate Black American aesthetic and a powerful message to push us forward, Eve #5 is a lump in your throat, wind at your back, and the horizon ahead of you. With the threat of self-inflicted global annihilation an all-too-real possibility, the title character says it best: "there's no future in despair."

Eve #5 Review: "There's No Future In Despair" — Eve #5 Cover. Credit: BOOM! Studios

Eve is a clone, one of many who has been tasked with taking a journey to try and undo the sins of her father, or of all of our fathers, in leaving a messy world that needs fixing. Through this series, she has struggled against impossible odds with her wits, her parents' lessons, and her determination as guiding stars. Here, she claims her inheritance and sets herself to do something that didn't happen before: leaving a better place than the one she found.

Victor LaValle's script here is wonderful, showing Eve as wholly human — tired, hopeful, frustrated, triumphant. From the Fishbone t-shirt to the symbol that greets her to the almost stained glass bee-inspired revelations she discovers, she learns from oral history and seeks improvement. The artwork of Jo Mi-Gyeong, Brittany Peer, and the incomparable Andworld Design depicts a dystopia not so far across the brink that it can't be pulled back, and while there's a little After Earth-ishness in the scenes, the science and, more importantly, the spirit of this work are engrossing.

Don't miss the back matter for a sense of the creative DNA for this project, which makes a lot of things add up once you examine it through that lens — at the same time denying the conservatives of nostalgia while being propelled towards new ideas by it. This is work that is worth seeing and a wonderful note towards the future. RATING: BUY.

Eve #5
By Victor LaValle, Jo Mi-Gyeong
Will Eve finally fulfill her destiny as humanity's last hope? Eve's long journey is coming to a head as she finally arrives at the Vault, which is now sunk deep below the ocean surface off the coast of Washington State. But what, or who, she finds within will either lead Eve to complete the most important mission of all time or complete the world's destruction. The epic conclusion to the dystopian fable no comic reader can afford to miss!

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