Eve by Victor LaValle

Illustrated by Jo Mi-Gyeong, colored by Brittany Peer

Eve spends most of her days learning skills preparing for future tasks with her father. He continuously tells her she’s the one who is going to save the world someday. She learns science, survival skills, and swims in the ocean. Then, she wakes up. The world has been destroyed by humans, and what remains is a deadly virus that changes children, as they hit puberty, into flesh-eating monsters they call Sumers. Eve’s favorite teddy bear, who is actually a complex android named Wexler, tells her she needs to travel across the country to a vault that contains the tools to hopefully save the planet. Eve finds out so much on her journey that her parents didn’t plan for, including clones, dangerous robots, and so much more.

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Eve is a beautiful young girl who has so much hope and life in her, and it’s inspiring. Despite being thrown into this pretty awful situation, Eve doesn't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for herself for what she has to accomplish, which is refreshing. She gets down to business pretty quickly and, as it turns out, her training while in her virtual reality slumber has made her pretty well equipped and somewhat fearless. The story does get a little rushed starting at the halfway point through to the ending - it probably could have used one more issue's worth of space to fill out what was happening, but the overall ending is still a satisfying one.

The art is absolutely gorgeous. The team of Mi-Gyeong and Peer have created a beautiful world despite all the desolation and zombie-creatures. The cover art gallery collection in the back displays the variant covers, and some of them are my favorite of modern comics. The artists involved in this project really outdid themselves creating wonderful pieces for LaValle's world.

There's a little bit of violence on the page when Eve and Wexler have to fight the Sumers. As Wexler's teddy bear exterior falls apart, his robot body that's left behind is pretty horrific. Wexler also gets shot a lot. Aside from these scenes, the rest of the story is beautiful and inspiring, so this would be fine for junior high & high school audiences.

​Sara's Rating: 8/10
Suitability Level: Grades 7-12

Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Publication Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781684158089 (Paperback)

​Tags: Rating: 8/10, Suitability: Middle School, Suitability: High School, Comicbooks, Action Adventure, Dystopian, Family, Survival, ​BOOM! Studios