We are beautiful, we are doomed!

[stubbleupdate]

I first found out from @iFanboy, (and indulged in some jubilant air-punching as I did so) that the winner of Top Cow Pilot Season 2011 was The Beauty.

Modern society is obsessed with outward beauty. What if there was a way to guarantee you could become more and more beautiful every day? What if it was contagious? In the world of The Beauty, physical perfection is attainable and while the mass majority of the population has taken advantage of it, Detectives Foster and Vaughn will soon discover it comes with a terrible price.
Writer/artist JEREMY HAUN (Detective Comics, Artifacts) and co-writer JASON A. HURLEY offer up a startling reflection on the cost of looking good in this procedural science fiction tale.

I read it on my tab, as well as highly-rated, but not that good, actually Theory of Everything (but I should probably read that one again). The Beauty was a good first issue that took a decent premise and made an interesting story around it.










She doesn't get better after that. She dies.

For a book where the premise is STD's there's mercifully no judging of any sort about sexual behaviour.

I really want to see where this story goes next, especially seeing how well one of the leads deals with the last page reveal. He goes home at the end of the day, has sex with his wife and wakes up the next morning looking ten years younger. Hopefully, it will come out at some point soonish and not still be MIA three years later

Comments

[icon_uk]

Hmmm, an interesting hook, though how does one define "beauty" when it's a subjective term which also shaped by society?

And I'm afraid I'm one of the people who would have been seriously suspicious about something like this if it happened in real life. The "constant fever" would have ruled it right out if nothing else.

(Heck, I'm unduly negative about laser eye-corrective surgery as I don't think there's enough evidence of the long term (as in LIFETIME) effects of the treatment.

[clutzycricket]

Constant fever might make sense if it was explained away as a consequence of higher metabolism... (Eye surgery is hardly as useful as advertised, I think. Of course, contacts make me a bit squeemish, so...)

It is an interesting book, though.

[stolisomancer]

A lot of modern beauty standards, while obviously influenced by the media, come down to features that convey health, strength, and vigor: muscular frame, straight teeth, clear eyes, clear skin, etc. A sufficiently invasive viral infection that somehow did these things would be enough for the purposes of the story.

[kurenai-tenka.livejournal.com]

Lol, that may be true for men, but that oh-so-popular emaciated look is hardly an image that conveys health.

[glprime]

All true.

I'd wager with the high fever, lower body fat percentage the argument of higher metabolism and greater energy production fits. It's a wasting disease with horrific deformities that people happen to be mistakenly viewing as beneficial, because it fits a "popular" standard of beauty.

It would be great if the writers investigated how other cultures afflicted with the Beauty viewed themselves as getting uglier.

[kurenai-tenka.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I definitely can see how a disease could lead to results that some may think look good, i.e parasites and weight loss.


The idea of looking at it in different cultures would be interesting to see though, certainly would make for fantastic cultural commentary.

[big_daddy_d]

The Beauty was actually one of the pilot season books that I liked. That and Theory of Everything.

[jkcarrier]

Definitely an interesting concept. Unfortunately, since everyone (or at least the lead characters) in comics tends to look like supermodels anyway, the effect is somewhat blunted -- you have to depend on the text to establish that these people are unusually good-looking.

[sir_mikael]

In the pages above they all seem a bit... tan/orange as well... Don't know if that's just to clue the reader in on the affected people or if it's supposed to be one of the ways in-universe people can tell.

[sir_mikael]

This looks very interesting actually. I do hope there will be more of it.