A review by jbeoin
Eugenic by James Tynion IV

dark slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

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.