Review: Generation Zero #1
Published by Valiant Entertainment
Written by Fred Van Lente
Art by Francis Portela and
Coloured by Andrew Dalhouse
The Plot
The story begins with a woman named Keisha asking about Zero (Generation Zero) at concerts, virtual reality arcades, and a bathroom. She (and a lot of others) try to contact them online. She comes from Rook, Michigan where everything seems a bit too perfect. Keisha wants help with figuring out what’s going on in her town and with what happened to her boyfriend, Stephen. Generation Zero responds and give her an immediate set of instructions to follow. Afterwards she goes about living her life as she normally would until she is invited to a party by the cool kids meant to honour her deceased boyfriend. Keisha finds that Stephen has managed to find a way to get a message to her prior to his disappearance. She sets off to the party and sees some…interesting people there and then sneaks off to do some investigating. Naturally she finds something very strange and is in danger until Generation Zero comes to her rescue.
The Breakdown
I really enjoyed this issue a lot. I’m not that big on number one issues because sometimes it takes titles a couple until thing are established and everything gets rolling. This one had me hooked very early on. I liked Keisha’s call for help because it was mixed in with a lot of other people with serious issues as well. I kind of expected her message and others to be along the lines of, “My mom took my phone away.” However, the approach that Van Lente took brings a lot more weight into Generation Zero’s decision-making process. The set-up and information provided about Rook was very well done. Even though we’ve seen Generation Zero before in the Harbinger series, Van Lente did a good job at building up to their appearance in this issue. The characterizations were good all-around and the bad guy reveal was really weird, but I’m looking forward to seeing what that’s about. There were just a lot of little details that I really liked, when Keisha’s father was talking to her about Stephen’s death his words just trailed off into blah, blah, blah while she was listening to him. The cast in this issue was very diverse and even included two characters with a disability, Rhi and Kwame (although his is just slightly hinted at). All in all, this makes everything feel much more grounded and makes it easier to get into the story. The art team of Portela and Dalhouse do a good job at making both the normal and the strange believable. They did a good job at bringing Van Lente’s story to life.
BUT…
I went over the issue one more time to see if there was anything that bothered me or that could’ve used changing…couldn’t find anything.
Buy It, Borrow It, Shelf Read It, or Ignore It?
BUY IT! If I had to assign a number rating to this one it would be a solid 8.5-9.0 out of 10. Seeing the world through a regular person was the way to go for this issue and it helped to establish the status quo for Generation Zero. Fred Van Lente does it again and I’m glad to see him on another Valiant title. This comic was released a couple of weeks ago, but I still felt compelled to write this review and tell people to buy it. I’m really looking forward to this next issue. Generation Zero is my favorite new title so far this year.
