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A review by dsnake1
Creatures: The City That Never Sleeps by Stéphane Betbeder
4.0
An ARC copy was provided by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Creatures: The City That Never Sleeps is the first volume of Creatures, a graphic novel that takes place sometime after an 'event' that turned many people into zombies of a sort. We follow two groups of kids: one brother-sister pair and another rag-tag group consisting of two brothers and two other kids. The first group is trying to survive in this post-apocalyptic world while caring for the survival of their seemingly vegetative mother. The surviving mostly falls on Vanilla, the older sister, as Peanut, the younger brother, appears to be quite young. The other group is a gang, more or less.
We're introduced to two main plotlines, really. The first is the conflict between our first pairing of children and the gang and its fruits. The second is between half of the gang, the brother pair, and one of the brother's quest for knowledge while braving a seemingly crazy old man.
For most of the volume, I was rather neutral. The characters don't inspire me to care about them much, aside from Peanut, and three out of four of the 'gang' members are downright unlikeable, in my opinion. Also, the dialog is a little stilted, and I wonder if it wouldn't be better in the original French. The hook in the last few pages of the volume was fantastic, though, and the alienesque antagonistic force looks to be interesting.
Is Creatures a unique concept so far? Not really. Was the execution great? Also not totally, although I really liked the art. Do I think this has a ton of potential if some of the more fantastical elements are well-explored? Absolutely.
All-in-all, I'd give this a 3.5/5 or so, and I'm pretty excited to learn more about the titular creatures.
Creatures: The City That Never Sleeps is the first volume of Creatures, a graphic novel that takes place sometime after an 'event' that turned many people into zombies of a sort. We follow two groups of kids: one brother-sister pair and another rag-tag group consisting of two brothers and two other kids. The first group is trying to survive in this post-apocalyptic world while caring for the survival of their seemingly vegetative mother. The surviving mostly falls on Vanilla, the older sister, as Peanut, the younger brother, appears to be quite young. The other group is a gang, more or less.
We're introduced to two main plotlines, really. The first is the conflict between our first pairing of children and the gang and its fruits. The second is between half of the gang, the brother pair, and one of the brother's quest for knowledge while braving a seemingly crazy old man.
For most of the volume, I was rather neutral. The characters don't inspire me to care about them much, aside from Peanut, and three out of four of the 'gang' members are downright unlikeable, in my opinion. Also, the dialog is a little stilted, and I wonder if it wouldn't be better in the original French. The hook in the last few pages of the volume was fantastic, though, and the alienesque antagonistic force looks to be interesting.
Is Creatures a unique concept so far? Not really. Was the execution great? Also not totally, although I really liked the art. Do I think this has a ton of potential if some of the more fantastical elements are well-explored? Absolutely.
All-in-all, I'd give this a 3.5/5 or so, and I'm pretty excited to learn more about the titular creatures.