Pariah Volume 1

Thank-you Sea Lion Books for allowing me to read an ARC for review.

What I found appealing about Pariah the moment I found out about it was that it was a story about teens, special teens being hunted down simply because they were different. It's a story I've heard of before but in Pariah the teens don't have special powers they are simply too smart for their own good.

In this first issue we meet Brent Marks a vitro who adamantly declares that he is not a freak on the second page but at the same time he is teaching a high school class of uninterested teens that what he has designed has limitless possibilities and could make any of them millions if they took his equation to the right company. And when Brent shows his frustration with the continued indifference of his peers I can't help but be reminded of my own former teachers back in high school because that's exactly how they would have reacted. And it just solidifies the idea that Brent Marks isn't a completely normal teenager even if he has no idea what goes on inside a girl's head like every other boy his age.
What sets the story in motion is what happens a few pages later when Brent returns home to his average parents. A disaster has occurred and suddenly all vitros everywhere has been declared terrorists and Brent is suddenly in deep trouble.

A story portrayed in rough lines and watercolour like style with soft hues, the art is certainly something that will take getting used to as I've never seen anything like it before but it was still beautiful to look at and had me taking in every detail on the page.

This book was a good start to what looks like to be a very promising series, a chapter to one what lays ahead.

Pros: varied characters, interesting premise, plays on politics and racism

Cons: artwork wasn't to my liking, not much info given as to how vitros were created and why they're so different

This graphic novel collects the first four issues of the Pariah comic books. Each comic details the background of a vitro character (or in one case a set of characters), and how they react when vitros are accused of blowing up a lab, releasing a virus into the environment. Together, the issues form a complex picture of how vitros are treated, how they differ from ‘normal' humans and how they're trying to survive.

The premise, that kids created using a special in vitro technique meant to eliminate disease, which boosts their intelligence, is a very interesting one. I wish more information were given about how they were born/what makes them different, but the series focuses more on the current crisis than their origins.

There's a variety of protagonists, offering several points of view with regards to what's happening and how the vitros should deal with it, culminating in Franklin Hyde, whose radical plan is enacted to unexpected results.

While I enjoyed the story the artwork wasn't to my liking.  This is purely a matter of personal taste and as the art didn't detract from the story it wasn't a problem.  But, unlike other graphic novels, this isn't one I pick up because I liked the artwork.   

This graphic novel ends with the characters coming together in unexpected circumstances, and the kind of cliffhanger that makes you wish the artist could draw faster.