A review by theomnivorescientist
Resistance: A Graphic Novel by Val McDermid

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

 

Resistance
by Val McDermid and Kathryn Briggs
Imprint:Black Cat
Page Count: 160
Publication Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 13978–0–8021–5872–7
Dimensions: 6.70"” x 9.45"
US List Price: $17.00
**This is an ARC provided by NetGalley for book reviews.**

Overview

The Scottish crime author Val McDermid and artist Kathryn Briggs have collaborated on a graphic novel called Resistance which fictionalizes a deadly outbreak of an infectious disease caused by a microbe which acquires antibiotic-resistance eventually wiping most of the earth’s population. A three-part BBC radio drama called Resistance about the story was aired in 2017. McDermid was a part of a workshop on anti-microbial resistance by the Wellcome Trust. Resistance as a graphic novel is a product of that workshop attended by scientists, authors, and professionals alike.

Detail Review

My first experience with McDermid’s nonfictional work was her extensively researched book Forensics-The Anatomy of Crime. She used interviews with several forensic professionals and scientists along with her own long experience to create a vivid world of unlocking mysteries hidden in crime scenes. She is no stranger to weaving scientific breakthroughs in her fictional works.

The graphic novel’s premise will be very familiar to us who survived 2020. The story begins with a journalist Zoe who goes to a music festival to interview upcoming musicians and new-generation artists. Sounds a bit like Glastonbury Festival alright with some 150,000 attendees attending the festival under open skies, battling heavy rain showers, muddy terrain, and queuing up for quick breaks at food trucks.

As the festival winds up a famous celebrity musician falls sick with food poisoning symptoms. The festival manager doesn’t seem bothered as many other people start showing similar symptoms. Eventually, the visitors pack up and go home. The people who fell sick at the festival get better eventually. But within a few days, people start observing strange purple skin lesions on their bodies. The doctors are clueless and they refuse to create a panic since the lesions do not seem to harm anyone. Meanwhile, food truck owner and Zoe’s friend Sam who attended the festival suspects a batch of meat he obtained from a nearby farm to be dodgy. He asks Zoe to dig around since people started getting sick with food poison at the festival. As time passes, more people turn up sick in hospitals. People converged to blame Sam’s sausage sandwiches as the culprit. Few musicians die and the infection seems to have spread outside Newcastle and spreading fast across England. Sounds familiar? Yes, and scarier.

The doctors and scientists are baffled alike since no medicines seem to work and people are dying. Eventually, the microbe is identified as a bacterium which has become antibiotic-resistance to all known medicines and hence patients go untreated. Zoe faces a crucial dilemma in front of her. Does she stay home to save her family from any possible infection or does she look for clues to find out the real starting point for the infection? Reminds us of the dilemma of our healthcare workers and frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic who fought every day to save lives despite knowing the fact that their jobs might endanger them or their families.

The story is brutally honest about the caustic treatment of scientists and scientific institutions by the government and private pharmaceutical companies. I was secretly proud of the way the script showed the farce that the administrative bodies are regarding healthcare policies and their ridiculous ignorance of financially supporting time-pressing research projects. The book is strewn with the intelligent portrayal of the resistance the scientists face while securing funding for their research while the big pharma ingests a massive amount of money for profitable drugs leaving none for altruistic and futuristic research.

A full-fledged pandemic led to mass mortality, disruption of civilized societal order in rural and semi-rural areas, mass paranoia, violence, crimes, migration, power outages, and finally the dissolution of governments. A group of scientists along with our protagonist survive due to their innate immunity ensconced in a remote area trying to connect to other people on other continents. Eventually, we find that most of the earth’s population is gone. Such is the price we paid for the incessant and blind usage of antibiotics which helped a tiny microbe to attain resistance to every known drug in the world.

Few facts mentioned in the book caught my eye and I found the relevant research attached to them. As a scientist, it is a humble duty to help my readers understand the best parts of a book such as this and the groups that painstakingly conduct experiments to give us an insight into crucial problems our planet faces. For example, a study published in GigaScience in 2020 did a metagenomic sample study from TARA Oceans project to quantify the antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and denote their abundance and distribution pattern. They found resistance to 26 classes of antibiotics. This is a result of decades of antibiotic-containing wastewater disposal in our oceans without any oversight or intervention. The book gives much to ponder about the impact of anthropocentric activities in creating havoc in the balance of the ecosystems, a result of which we are currently facing in the form of a highly infectious virus.

The artwork in the novel has a blend of the classic Art Nouveau style in some important moments in the story. There are illustrations which act as visual metaphors for themes like mortality and death. The pain and guilt of survivors who lost their loved ones to the disease are carved through a spiritual depiction of our existential dread. A visual narrative such as this which depicts the impact of science on the society is always more impactful than any academic text and the graphic novel is successful in achieving that aim.