Eugenic

by James Tynion IV, Eryk Donovan (Illustrator)

A brand new story of the apocalypse from horror masters James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan, Eugenic tracks the evolution of humanity across three separate centuries as each set of descendants must grapple with the sins of their predecessors.

When a plague ravages the world, one scientist discovers the cure and becomes the savior of mankind. Hope is restored, and the world rebuilds. But then people who took the cure begin having children who are... unnatural, and the definition of "normal" is forever altered.

The GLAAD Award-nominated team of James Tynion IV ( Detective Comics, Memetic ) and Eryk Donovan ( The Hellblazer, Quantum Teens are Go ) bring you a new vision of the apocalypse, exploring the conception and evolution of humanity’s future across three separate centuries.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Graphic Novels Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2018

About the author

Prior to his first professional work, Tynion was a student of Scott Snyder's at Sarah Lawrence College. A few years later, he worked as for Vertigo as Fables editor Shelly Bond's intern. In late 2011, with DC deciding to give Batman (written by Snyder) a back up feature, Tynion was brought in by request of Snyder to script the back ups he had plotted. Tynion would later do the same with the Batman Annual #1, which was also co-plotted by Snyder. Beginning in September 2012, with DC's 0 issue month for the New 52, Tynion will be writing Talon, with art by Guillem March. In early 2013 it was announced that he'd take over writing duties for Red Hood and the Outlaws in April.

Tynion is also currently one of the writers in a rotating team in the weekly Batman Eternal series.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some solid Twilight Zone or Black Mirror- like sci-fi. What will happen to humans when they are replaced with their evolutionary superior children? A virus mutates the offspring of most of humanity, giving everyone the same deformities while also making them larger, stronger, faster, smarter. Each issue jumps two hundred years in the future as we see the ultimate fate of humanity. I'll not lie to you and say this is a fun read, but fans of dystopian sci-fi will dig it.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's both weirdly unsettling and strangely appropriate that James Tynion IV's graphic novel "Eugenic" was published two years prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, but perhaps a millenial gay comic book artist with a dark streak was the perfect person to tune into the systemic inequities and cultural dysfunctions that would erupt into the global shit-show when the pandemic hit.

In the book, a global pandemic that starts in the United States leaves billions dead and a large percentage of survivors left irreparably genetically damaged. In a desperate attempt to save humanity, a brilliant geneticist creates a vaccine. The catch? He secretly implanted within the vaccine a way to (hopefully) "weed" out humanity's worse angels, such as hatred, jealousy, and rage. It worked. Kind of.

The book is told in three sections. The second section takes place decades after the world has been "saved". The new humans---"Numans"---that were born after the pandemic have set up cities around the world where they have placed the humans who survived or were naturally immune. They are essentially ghettos where humanity's worse angels are free to roam.

In the third section, it is over a century or two since the last humans have died off. Humans are relegated to a poorly-attended museum piece and a memory. What remains of humanity---the Numans---bear little to no resemblance to what we once were. A lone Numan who studies (and feels a sad affinity for) the lost humans makes a choice that will, once again, alter the face of humanity.

A gripping and powerful science fiction story, "Eugenic" is a strange blend of misanthropy and social justice, humor and dark pathos. If anything, it demonstrates that, when it comes to humanity, there is no such thing as perfection, and that may be by design.

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a meaty comic that makes you think about a lot while reading it.

When the population of the world is shrinking due to a virus, one person figures out a cure. Everyone stops dying and we can begin to grow again! But then when the first woman gives birth it's...a creature of some sort coming out. We will come to call them Numans. This story starts off with the cure, part 2 is about the rebellion of the new race of people, and then the utopia, if you can call it that, and what's happening.

Good: I love the idea behind this. It's both horrific and understandable all at once. The three part series actually works in jumps of time and doesn't feel badly done. I also enjoyed the end of each chapter as it gives a nice "what happens now?"

Bad: I wish we had more time in each era. Maybe 50 pages in each to really get it all. Also, this is a lot of exposition verses dialog or natural talking. It can be a bit much at times.

Overall it's a solid, interesting, and somewhat depressing look at the world. When you fix one thing, another terrible thing grows, and is there ever really a cure for that? A 3.5 out of 5.

[Shaun Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eugenic collects issues 1-3 of the Boom Studios comic written by James Tynion IV with art by Eryk Donovan.

When a plague devastates the world population, a biomedical engineer develops a cure but also sneaks in a genetic modifier into every vaccine that will alter humankind forever.

This story is an interesting look at the post apocalyptic genre in which humans fight for their survival against their genetically modified superiors. Told in three separate stories set two hundred years apart, we get visions of where the Earth could go when humanity is removed from the human race. A lot of interesting ideas are tackled in this sci-fi horror tale.

[Fny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sci-fi horror at its finest. So bleak but also many thoughts coming through. I digged it.

[MonumentToDecency · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's never mattered how smart or healthy you were - not if you were different. Different in one of the countless ways that matter even though they shouldn't.

I was baffled when I saw Eugenic sitting on the library shelf. I wondered what kind of person would proudly name their book with such a negative term in this day and age. Flicking through the pages I saw two men having a smooch so I decided it cant be all that bad, and on the stack it went.

The year is 2037. Over 50% of humankind is wiped out by a plague. 60% of the remaining population is infected as carriers or victims, and every baby born to plague carriers is stillborn. Where I assume many thousands of scientists had failed, one very clever geneticist (the one I saw smooching his husband when I flicked through earlier) is able to succeed in making a cure. Yay! Or not...

The geneticist is gay. This seems like an insignificant point but it underpins everything. Society has infinitely sucked at treating gay people in any kind of decent manner and our geneticist knows that all too well. He had an idea that getting rid of difference - from gender to skin colour - would fix things. Gay people know the feeling that it would be so much easier if we were all the same . Though even if I, and I suspect most of us, had a choice I'd never give it up.

What if no child in the world was born attracted to the same gender?... what if no child in the world was born with a sex that didn't match their gender? What if race would never be part of the equation again?

The geneticist adds some wizardry into the plague cure and abracadabra Numans. He randomised how we look, improved intelligence, made us faster, stronger, dependent on less food and less sleep. But we all look like monsters 'so that they could never fetishise or hate any difference. No two people would be alike, but all the same'. It doesn't work though because there are still 'normal' humans. And now the normal humans are the minority and the Numans see us as inferior. And, there is still difference. And, the world of issues that go along with all being the same. Lots of and's.

This was an incredibly good exploration of what makes us human, of why we should be proud of and celebrate our differences. Eugenic makes a very good argument as to why it is so important to remember our past. Its a good story. Takes 20 minutes to read but a lifetime to think about.

My rating: 4.2 Days At The Races out of 5

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good end to the "apocalypse" trilogy. All of these books (Memetic, Cognetic, and this one) kind of have a similar theme in common: that when we do away with our differences and come together as one big group (hivemind, whatever), that's when bad things happen. Even if it's our differences that lead to violence and hate and all the other problems that currently plague us, it's these differences that will eventually help us to overcome these larger issues. This time out, after a plague has wiped out much of humankind, a genetic researcher comes up with a cure, but the cure might be even worse, since it leads to the birth of a new, homogenized race, "numanity," and the remnants of humanity are in trouble. Good art throughout. If anything, I'd say this (and the other two series) could use a bit more development--stretch them out from 3-book series into 4 or 5. Otherwise, pretty well-done. These are stories that would fit well into a Twilight Zone or Black Mirror sort of television show and are interesting and thought-provoking.

[47Time · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a gay married couple if anyone is interested. It's an afterthought that doesn't add anything to the story. They kiss, so you have that. The story based on genetic manipulation might be exaggerated, but there is some truth to it. The author blames humanity for its destructive nature, but also praises diversity. By the end it's pretty difficult to tell who is right and who is wrong.

The plot focuses on human nature and the inherent evil that humans have inside them. The main character in the story's first part does the ultimate act of immorality harkening back to Mengele himself - he changes the human genome. His goal is to create a perfect human to eliminate prejudice and disease. The new race takes over the world, segregates the humans and carries out more unethical tests. Eventually, the Numans lose all recollection of their past.

The Mississippi Delta Virus has killed millions of people and has caused stillbirths all over the world. Enter dr. Cyrus Crane from the Gonring-Cole pharmaceutical company. He develops a vaccine, but the births following the administration of the cure are all malformed. That puts the people in an uproar.

Crane decided on his own to tinker with the human DNA to remove many other afflictions on top of the MDV. He wanted to change physical characteristics to remove any reason to hate another person based on appearance. Then he kills the board of directors at Gonring-Cole using a strain of MDV. This removes any chance to reverse his changes.

Over 200 years later society has remolded with the mutated generation or Numans pretty much taking over and wiping traces of the old world from people's minds. The regular humans, immune to the vaccine, are considered inferior and are segregated in Pariah Cities. When reaching 21 years of age they must pass a test to be inducted into regular society. If they fail, they can still live their lives in the Northern Reserve after being sterilized.

Rebekka Fernandez is a human working with the Children of Samir who oppose the Numans. She sacrifices herself to bring information to the rest of humanity about the unfair treatment inside the Pariah Cities and the monstruous experiments carried out on the humans.

After another 200 years we see Numan Cyrus, one of the last few employees in the world's only museum to humanity. He can't stand what the Numans have done to the world. He takes a sample of the MDV strain Crane used to kill the Gonring-Cole board of directors and releases it into a large crowd. He sees this as the only thing he can do, though he is certain it won't change the world.

[Zedsdead · Rating 3 out of 5]

A near-future pandemic decimates the world population and spreads infertility in the survivors, threatening the existence of humanity. Fortunately, a generational genius geneticist is able to create a civilization-saving vaccine...but he takes the opportunity to "fix" homo sapiens' genocidal bigotry once and for all. He does this by standardizing skin color (purple) and size and strength (big and strong), eliminating homosexuality and transgenderism (Tynion sidesteps questions about the scientist's motives here by making him gay) and by randomizing the location of facial features. The idea being that there can be no general definition of beauty and no races or ethnic groups. Nothing in which bigotry can find purchase.

Of course mankind outwits his well-intentioned atrocity by being partially immune to the genetic-rewriting component of the vaccine. Cut to 200 years later, where we find the giant purple "numans" keeping the minority human population in ghettos and breeding them into exotic, often painful or repulsive forms for labor or entertainment. Think designer dogs with unnecessary breathing problems.

Each of the three eras we visit ends with a different POV character saying "I've done what I can. Now it's up to the rest of you to save the world."

It's moderately interesting as a defense of multiculturalism and an indictment of unilateralism, though I didn't detect anything particularly astute or thought-provoking.

The design and illustration were adequate. The genius scientist who saves the world looks like a reality TV star; I doubt real scientists puts that much effort into hair dye and ear gauging. And nudity is always carefully obstructed by incidental machinery and furniture. With the juvenile nudity blockers, the overly young and stylish epidemicist, and the earnest but shallow subject matter, Eugenic feels geared toward high school sophomores.

[Maksym Karpovets · Rating 2 out of 5]

Доволі цікава ідея: генетично модифікований вид людей (хоча вже й нелюдей) допоможе позбавитись усіх упереджень, утисків, проблем. Однак, як і в кожній антиутопії, такий вид швидко усвідомлює свою першість, витісняючи людей і їх цивілізацію. Викривлений геном, який відображує викревлений світ у скошених хмарочосах, показує лише погані наслідки такого експерименту. Все ж, читати це доволі важко в усіх сенсах. Історія дуже грубо обтесана, подібно до малюнку, який хоч і бридкий, огидний відповідно до замислу, але однаково не рятує. Словом, якщо ви невиправні фанати доволі хорошого письменника Джеймса Тиніона IV або жанру, то читати варто. В іншому разі сміливо пропускайте.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess this was the end of the Memetic, Cognetic, Eugenic trilogy. This one especially comes across as a commentary on the state of humanity, although really all three did. This one seemed more pronounced. It was as much a sci fi book as a horror book, and had a bleak ending much like the other two.

Overall this was a good horror trilogy, but only if you like some science fiction mixed in with your horror.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reading the 2018 paperback collection of this comic miniseries) Wonderful sci fi / horror probing a dystopian future where humans must survive a worldwide epidemic of genetic aberration. Artist Eryk Donovan uses vibrant colours throughout. My first reading of any of James Tynion's oeuvre. I am impressed and look forward to reading more.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun but somewhat preachy. I mean, I agree with the author, but didacticism is difficult to pull off by even the best authors. I love being exposed to new lines of thinking but I think Eugenic is really just preaching to the choir. If you read the other related series (Memetic and Cognetic) maybe this would hit harder, but standing alone it's "meh".

[yen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I decided to finally read this wonderful piece of work amongst a global pandemic.

It all started 2022.
Goddamn it.

Tynion’s writing delivers a horror food for thought sci-fi filled story that keeps you at the edge of fiction and reality. It’s a fascinating read.

[Alex Sarll]

I thought any topicality here would come from the recent upsurge of interest in eugenics among precisely the sort of twerps you'd expect it would at least eliminate. But no, it opens in the aftermath of a new plague which has rampaged across the world, albeit one which looks to have put a bit more welly into it than this distinctly lackadaisical coronavirus*. As so often happens, as we've already seen this time around, the story's Mississippi Delta Virus exacerbated existing divisions; immigrant populations were scapegoated, containment was a lot harder on the poor than the rich, and as has generally been the case this century, humanity all-round behaved like a barrel of starving rats. So the scientist who finally cracked the vaccine – himself both gay and disabled, and married to an Indian man, so all too aware of how difference can be treated – decides to piggyback a little something extra. All future humans will be genetically optimised. They'll all be free of the characteristics on which discrimination has historically picked - but with a fabulous variety of their own. Because they will all be, by previous generations' aesthetic standards, monsters.

It's a brilliant set-up – mad science, yes, but the sort of mad science where you can absolutely understand how someone's been driven to it, rather than just 'I will be EEEVIL because, um, the writer needs a plot?' Is the set-up too soft on Big Pharma (well, aside from the maverick genocide bit)? Absolutely, but it lampshades how uncharacteristic their charity was here, even if it does backfire. Might one complain about the minority coding of the arguable villain? One might, but in this case it's absolutely key to the motivation, and besides, queer-cided villains are pretty much my role models. Does it play into the most lurid antivax fantasies? Yes, but as with Channel 4's excellent Utopia, somehow I don't mind that in the way I do plots which appear to be riffing on 9/11 truther crap, and I honestly could not altogether tell you why. Though I think it helps that when he talks about his thought processes, the first condition he mentions as something he'd realised he could get rid of is autism, which is after all the one on which the most mainstream developed world (ha!) antivax discourse has tended to fixate. A nice way of grounding the crazy plan: oh, you're scared of divergence from the norm, you say? Fine, here's the new norm – hope you like it!

Of course, that's just the plan, and the first issue. We all know what happens to plans. We also all know, or really ought to by now, that if there's one thing humans are really good at, it's finding new reasons to hate each other, new lines of division. It'll take more than a little thing like entirely altering the face of the species to change that.

Considered alongside its siblings in Tynion and Donovan's Apocalyptic trilogy, I think it's more distinctive than Cognetic (which itself certainly wasn't bad), but unlikely to attain the same crossover success as sloth meme doomfest Memetic. At least, not with humans in their current form...

*Footnote solely to rue the irony should I subsequently die of the bastard.

[Shazia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eugenic is a great comic made up of three chapters that come together to tell the story of the end of Humankind and the beginning of Numankind: what they are, how they came about, and what will (potentially) be their future.

The first chapter opens up with the story of a scientist who decides to “fix” humans, despite no one asking. This of course screws everything up because no, we don’t need a white dude to fix everyone’s issues. After creating a vaccine for a deadly virus that has a 100% success rate, he decides to embed new, “superior” DNA in the vaccine so that humans from now on will be born with these deformities. These new beings are no longer humans since the DNA has been altered and are known as Numans.

I won’t be going into the other two chapters of the story in my review but I really enjoyed each section of Eugenic, even though each took place during different time periods. There was so much world building that I wish there was more to read! However the story does wrap up nicely and sometimes it’s better not to turn a good story into a long drawn out series.

I didn’t realize that Eugenic is part of Tynion and Donovan’s “Apocalyptic” trilogy, which sounds like such a cool concept (seriously, anything apocalypse themed has my name on it). So I’ll definitely be reading the other two comics.

[Fabio R. Crespi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Eugenic", l'ultima delle tre apocalissi di James Tynion IV, parte in modo molto più classico da un virus che infetta il 60% dell'umanità. E da un vaccino scoperto da un genetista che assicura la guarigione al 100%.
Tutti felici finché lo scienziato stesso rivela che il vaccino introduce una mutazione che sarà visibile solo con le nuove nascite: il mondo si popola, quindi, di "mostruosità", ognuna diversa una dall'altra.
In questo nuovo mondo viene ribaltato il concetto di normalità, come era negli intenti dello "scienziato pazzo": la nuova umanità è più forte e intelligente, le mutazioni casuali che vengono introdotte, fanno in modo che nessuno assomigli a nessun altro, che la diversità non sia mai più un fattore di scontro tra gli esseri umani.
Ma la vecchia umanità sopravvive, confinata in ghetti. E lotta fino alla fine, per quello che può servire. E poi sopravvive nei ricordi, nei memoriali dedicati alla "vecchia" umanità. E sopravvive nei rimorsi di coscienza di uno dei curatori di questi memoriali. La fine è arrivata, dunque, ma la successiva incombe.
In questa apocalisse, meno criptica e aliena delle due precedenti, si possono riconoscere evidenti parallelismi con la nostra storia e si possono trarre diversi spunti di riflessione.

[alexander shay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely recognize the storytelling of Tynion in this volume, and the queer rep is always great. But other than that, I'm actually not totally sure how to feel about this book. It's a standalone instead of a series, but each of the three comics inside are technically separate from each other, each building on the previous but not entirely dependent on knowing the details of the first. It presents an interesting concept but does become a little competitive by the third time around and I finished the book feeling like something was lacking. My only guess is because the plot was not linear and was arguably not even a plot so much as recounting brief episodes in three different people's lives, as well as not being able to really connect to the characters enough before we're moving on to the next already.

[Valéria. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what to say.. I expected something totally different. I mean, first issue is exactly what I wanted. And then in second we jump into the future - boring. Third? Again jump. Boring. It was didactic way too much. It was like some kind of brochure with theme "stop being racist, gays are people too, make love - not war", but with great art. It could have been better, start was amazing, interesting concept for sure.

[Matthew Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I really love the concept of this and I feel like this could’ve easily been an episode of Black Mirror, pointing us toward an (extreme) example of where humanity could be headed given certain divisions and biases. Reading this after Covid also puts this in an interesting spot that probably added a lot more to this than if I would’ve read it before. This one made me think a lot, so for that reason, I’m glad I read this one and the entire apocalyptical trilogy by Tynion.

[Kate]

Not sure how I felt about this one. I might come back and give it a star rating later. My favorite part was the moment discussing the myth of unity post-9/11 and how one character thought a pandemic would create a similar unity to the one she believed had happened then. (spoiler: it didn't, in the comic or in real life.)

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know what's funny? The story ends with the end of the world. There's nothing past that, it just ends. Fitting when you think about it: there's no one left to tell the story so it ends.

The same goes for the other two books in the series, even though Goodreads doesn't group them like they are a series.

[Lukas Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tough read. Three issues, all sort of stand-alone stories, all startling in their plotting and endings. Really thought provoking work.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tough story to rate, on the one hand it's a nicely done generational tale, on the other hand the villain is a little to...spot on.

[Sarospice · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2. I'm not sure what I thought. It's very high concept: what does one do to keep the world going thru a lens that it's fighting over differences that makes it so hard. Of course a gay man ruins everything, so they got that part right .. Wish it had gone a bit more to a satisfying ending.

[Levi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mehh

[Jonathan Lee B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eugenic is table tennis with a volleyball.

[Jessi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Content Notes: eugenics, ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, forced sterilization, murder, forced breeding, involuntary confinement, portrayal of facial differences as a negative, discussion but not portrayal pandemic, gore

Sigh. I really did not like this comic, y'all. I'm a fan of James Tynion IV's work in general, so I was disappointed by this one.

It was just not well written at all. There were some intriguing ideas and concepts that would have been great to see explored, but these were not. Nearly the entire comic is just characters telling us what has happened in the past-- in three different time periods. There's almost no forward action whatsoever in the story, and whenever we did reach one, we were thrown into a new time period each time where the exposition continued. This made it very dull and extremely tedious to read.

It didn't help that the lettering was difficult to read, too. I think half of the blame for that comes from the terrible writing, but I wish Jim Campbell had found other ways to make the lettering easier to read instead of packing such large chunks of text together in the balloons.

The art was probably the better part of the story; however, it didn't really move me. There were several moments with proportions and consistency that could have been better, as well as clarity. Overall, this entire comic felt rushed and ill conceived.

And finally, the part that's bugging me the absolute most: all the ableism.

Lemme get this out of the way first-- I understand what they were aiming for with this story. The point was not lost on me that the creators were aiming to show "eugenics bad." However, whenever you have people writing about "hideous mutations" of humans, it inevitably goes on to illustrate those features in ways that imply that people with facial and body differences are monsters, are somehow a danger to "normal" people. That's ableism. And frankly, that pisses me off.

People with facial and body differences get treated like crap a lot, especially in media. Scars and visible disabilities are so often used as a visual shorthand for implying someone is evil or up to no good, and it only contributes to the stigma actual disabled people have to deal with every day. Using these things as clumsy metaphors needs to end.

As a comics community, we need to leave the whole entire trope of disabled and visibly different villains behind. I could write a whole essay on this subject, but this is not the space to do so. So suffice it to say, I really didn't like this comic.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Horror creators seem to have a hard time with crafting stories about eugenics that don't depend on the audience being disgusted by disabled bodies. This book provides a double whammy of that tendency. First, we have a disabled mad scientist villain who wants to create a master race--a trope that should have died with Dr. Strangelove and a really convenient way of blaming disabled people for the forces that wish us dead. Second, we have the villain's supposedly horrific creations who are apparently meant to evoke body horror with their congenital facial differences. Because the best way to argue against eugenics is to show it resulting in more icky disabled people, I guess.

As a disabled reader, I felt shut out of many aspects of this book. Not just because the ableist elements were really alienating, but also because my immediate reaction to the full-page reveal of the first numan baby was more along the lines of "look at the widdle toesy-wosies" than the gut-wrenching terror I imagine I was meant to feel.

[Matt Sabonis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m sure in like 2018 or whatever when it was made, this was a kinda fun series. But in 2021, it’s shockingly naive and wrong-headed, and I feel like I’d be embarrassed to have written it.