Oh, the subtle play on words
Seems like that teen vampire movie based on that teen book with the apple on the cover isn’t just taking over the real world, the kids in Eureka are pretty crazy about it too. And it looks like Zoe’s daydreams of finding her Mister Right in school where she doesn’t fit in is about to go terribly wrong.
The nice thing about the Eureka series by Andrew Cosby and Jaime Paglia with script by Jonathan L. Davis is they are fairly short minis of four issues each. This means if you don’t get into one story, it’s only a few months before the next story arcs arrives, and you have a whole new #1 to get into the swing of things.
In Dormant Gene, Zoe finds a lot of similarities between her situation and that of Bella Swan, heroine of the Stephenie Meyer Twilight novels. Only in Eureka, it isn’t called Twilight, it’s called Sundown (get it?), and there aren’t really vampires (yet), but the desire to find a normal person Zoe can connect to is strong.
So when she meets mister hunky-dory in the form of cute boy named Gene, things look like they will turn out for the better. That is until a 50-foot tall girl starts a rampage (maybe a mutated gene), forcing Gene to save Zoe from an ironic death. And while Jack Carter approves of the new potential boyfriend, it looks like Gene’s been dormant too, waiting for the right time to approach the girl he’s in love with.
Oh yeah, there’s going to be some creepy stalker moments in this issue! And with the giant girl, and Gene both tying into the story’s title, and the fact that Zoe and Gene meet in a biology class while studying chromosomes, I have a feeling the play on words isn’t over yet.
This issue is another fine set-up to the much larger arc, and I like that the focus isn’t on some science experiment gone wrong, although that could develop before the end of the series – but rather focuses on Zoe, the misfit of the younger set, and let’s the reader experience the world of Eureka and Tesla high through her eyes. What will be even more interesting is to see how the events from this issue will tie into the television series.
I’m still not completely sold on the art. If I remember my conversations correctly, Boom! can’t use the likenesses of the characters inside the book, which is why the characters in the book look just different enough from the television series, that the reader will still know who is who, but won’t suddenly go, “Oh, Boy! Here comes Erica Cerra in that tight Sheriff uniform!â€Â Don’t take that as a dig on the art, while as the characters look different, the art is as good as your going to see in Buffy, or Conan. That being said, I really enjoyed the layout and design of the giant girl tearing through the school on her way out of the building. Nicely done.
Eureka: Dormant Gene #1 is another solid first issue. It moves quickly through the setup to the reveal that somethin’ just ain’t right with that boy, and doesn’t drag or hang on nonsense moments that have no bearing on the story. Eureka isn’t going to appeal to everyone, and readers are going to have to be familiar with the show in order to understand what is going on in the book. Eureka: Dormant Gene #1 is a good start to a new story arc, earning 3 out of 5 Stars.
