Eve Stranger

Eve Stranger #1-5

by David Barnett

You have unlimited funds, a jet-set lifestyle, and extraordinary abilities. So what happens when you develop a sneaking suspicion you're working for the bad guys? Meet Eve Stranger, amnesiac for hire. Eve wakes up in a hotel room without knowing who she is or how she got there. Beside her is a teddy bear, a credit card, a briefcase of cash, a used syringe, and a letter in her own handwriting that explains her next mission. She's living week by week, undertaking different, seemingly impossible tasks on behalf of a mystery benefactor. Her bloodstream is flooded with nanobombs, and the contents of the syringe deactivates them for one week and also wipes her memory. Because every Friday morning she wakes up with a clean slate and a new job, from black ops action/adventure hero to personal shopper, scuba treasure hunter to space station saboteur.

Genres: Comics, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Fiction

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 8, 2019

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part Memento, part The Bourne Identity. Eve Stranger wakes up each week in a hotel room with a note and a gun and no recent memories but unnatural strength and reflexes. Each week she's given a mission to complete so she can get the medicine that will keep her alive and at the same time cause her to lose her memory. This was pretty solid. It comes a apart a bit towards the end. I've always liked Philip Bond's art.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the amnesiac super spy hurdles the hotel mattress and jump-kicks the room-service waiter in the jaw, she recalls, fleetingly, to trust nobody except her stuffed animal, a walleyed bear named Huldu. This is normal. Because for Eve Stranger, nothing is stranger than not waking up and fighting for her life at the behest of a shadowy organization at the cutting edge of biopharmaceuticals and urban paramilitary campaigns.

EVE STRANGER is a funky adventure that blends the best of Euro-style comics as interwoven with a simple, if conventional action story. Eve is good at her job. Being an amnesiac, she doesn't know or understand why, but it's not the type of thing to bother her for very long. Whether assigned to assassinate a world leader or hired to party hard on a quiet evening in Thailand, Eve is beholden to the dirty money funneled through the pockets of her scheming bosses. She's got something fancy in her blood that gives her a slew of super-adaptive abilities -- strength, speed, IQ, etc. -- which means whether buzzing through big cities on a superbike or taking a quick pit-stop to the international space station (to deliver somebody's divorce papers), she's learns that having a crappy short-term memory isn't necessary for her to do her job well.

Eve is unlucky, however, in that having a crappy short-term memory makes leaving the E.V.E. Project and becoming her own person relatively impossible. What's a gal to do?

In a fun and swirling blend of old-timey pulp (quick and punchy violence, straightforward narrative) and modern Euro-educated craft (smooth and expressive movement, meticulous coloring), EVE STRANGER is a comic book for readers who want something that hits hard and fast, yet spares the usual, heedless attempt to save the world from certain doom. Eve is a skilled spy but she falls in love rather easily and doesn't mind sharing a beer with a genetically modified ape. Eve will accept any mission, no matter how grisly or seemingly inhumane, but the execution thereof is always subject to situational ethos. EVE STRANGER doesn't relish violence for its own sake, the book gives its main character the agency to adjudicate whether and how much violence is necessary to get the job done.

The comic's generally anti-climactic and open-ended conclusion leaves one wanting, but overall, the book is efficiently written and beautifully drawn. The book's interstitial comics, with art by Liz Prince, tracking nonsensical "everyday" moments in Eve's life, can be ignored. EVE STRANGER does well with a very simple concept, and readers should take note of how effectively the creative team accomplished its goal.

[Alex Sarll]

A super-agent whose short-term memory resets every week, so somewhere between Bourne and Memento, except neither of them ever ended up fighting and then boozing with a giant talking ape climbing a Prague landmark. Philip Bond's art suits the spy-fi craziness to a tee, making it all the sadder that with this volume I've now read every tale the publisher, his wife Shelly's too-short-lived Black Crown imprint, managed to finish telling.

[Russ Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this online after googling the artist Philip Bond, who I've been a big fan of for some years, after his work on Deadline magazine in the 80's and 90's and later work for DC, thinking I hadn't seen anything by him for a while. While I enjoyed the art, as ever (and wished I'd been able to find more), I found the story, of a girl who finds herself a programmable gun for hire, and her attempts to find out her past and a way out of this, to be a bit predictable and trite, which was a shame

[Cameron Lazenberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt like this bit was kind of goofy and just enjoyable. Sone reviews complained about the lack of imagination, the story was trite but I think there is just a dramatic goofy spin to it all that gives it a peculiar and special edge. So 4 and I'd say worth it.

[Jorge Muñoz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philip Bond is sooooo good.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really cool character and a cool story concept.

[Calvin Daniels · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid 3.5

Sadly doesn't seem like it made it past this one :(

[V · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most creative premise, but I liked the art.

[Juju · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up for Philip Bond's art, and Eve Stranger does not disappoint if you're just expecting cool looking Vertigo-esque nuttiness.