Memetic #1 (BOOM!)

CREDIT: BOOM! Studios

Rating: 4/5 – Whatever You Do, Don’t Look at Good Times Sloth.
by ComicSpectrum EiC Bob Bretall.

A whole new twist on the post apocalyptic tale from writer James Tynion IV and artist Eryk Donovan tell a story of the world going to hell in a handbasket.  We open the issue on “Day Three” and see that everything looks pretty post-apocalyptic, then quickly flash back to “Day One” to watch as thing go wrong. What I really enjoyed about this issue was watching the run up to the breakdown while following our main characters Aaron Sumner, a college student, and Marcus Shaw, the former head of Military Intelligence.  They’re two excellent sources of insight into what is happening as the Good Times Sloth meme hits the internet at 7:04 am on “Day One”.

A meme is a unit of cultural information that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.  Most common nowadays is internet transmission of memes and that’s what we’re dealing with in this story.  Memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer more concerned with the success of information transfer than the truth behind that information (as anyone who watches cable news can attest).   This story revolves around the Good Times Sloth meme:

CREDIT: BOOM! Studios

Look at this image and in the world of the comic you’re entranced and are immediately overcome by a sense of euphoria.  Needless to say, people like feeling this way so they rush to look at the image.  Time slips away.  The next thing someone knows, they’re been staring at it for 90 minutes.  The question is why?  Both why does it do what it does and why is the creator of the image doing this?  This is a 3 issue series and that’s for the next couple of issues to explore.   Personal preference aside (I hate the flash-forward beginning as a literary device) Tynion does a good job of giving me just the right amount of information to hook me on the story.  Donovan’s art kept the story moving forward and he used some interesting camera angles and close ups throughout the issue that led my eye to just the parts of each scene that were key to moving the story forward.

Tynion weaves a tight tale here setting all the dominoes in place, knocking over the 1st one at the end of the issue.  I’m all in for the 3 issues because I really need to see what pattern the falling dominoes are going to make.  Story set up is complete, we see where we’re going to end up in the short term, now the story needs to be fleshed out to make it more than just a cool idea.  I loved this issue and if the pay-off lives up to the setup I can see giving the entire series a 5/5.  As it sits right now, I’m hedging my bet and giving this a 4/5 as a really solid setup and I’m looking forward to seeing how the entire tale stands up.

Reviewed by: Bob Bretall
(bob@comicspectrum.com)
https://comicspectrum.com/ Covering the full spectrum of comics culture

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