Review: The Beauty, Vol 1 (ARC) by Jeremy Haun (Story & Art) & Jason A. Hurley (Story)

Genre: Comics
Date Published: March 16 2016
Publisher: Image Comics
Pages: 164
Buy: Image Comics // Amazon // Comixology
Follow Jeremy Haun on Twitter // Follow Jason A. Hurley on Twitter

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 a sexually transmitted disease? In the world of The Beauty, physical perfection is only one sexual encounter away. The vast majority of the population has taken advantage of it, but Detectives Vaughn and Foster will soon discover it comes at a terrible cost. Now, they’ll have to find their way past corrupt poiticians, vengeful federal agents, and a terrifying mercenary out to collect the price on their heads. Collects the first six issues of the critically acclaimed, Pilot Season winning series by writer/artist JEREMY HAUN (Constantine, Batwoman) and co-writer JASON A. HURLEY.

I received an ARC of this from Netgalley and the Publishers in exchange for an honest review.

Oh my god. Oh my GOD. OH MY GOD!!!!!

Where do I even start? I’m still trying to process everything that happened.

To be honest, the cover art was what captured my attention. It was absolutely stunning, as was the art throughout the entire volume. I just had to check it out and see what it was about and I am so glad I did. This was so incredibly captivating and it had so many elements: suspense, drama, horror and humor. It was such a great balance, so many crazy things where happening and then there would be a perfect one liner or scene that made you laugh out loud. The humor did not take away from the intensity, it was placed perfectly.

The Beauty is about a new sexually transmitted disease that makes the person infected turn stunningly beautiful. Everyone, besides the Anti-Beauty group, thinks this disease is amazing and tries to come in contact with it. What everyone doesn’t expect is for The Beauty to start killing everyone in an extremely brutal way.

This volume is centered around a man named Drew, who is a detective, called to investigate the first victim who died from the beauty, he’s joined by his partner Kara and together they try and work out what’s happening. I can’t even put in words how much I loved Kara, she was such an incredibly strong female character. She was so badass, but she was also incredibly human. I’m getting emotional just typing this. I loved her a lot. I feel like female characters don’t always have the best representation in comics, but this was not the case here. I also adored Kara and Drew’s friendship. Friendship dynamics are SO important to me and The Beauty didn’t disappoint.

Certain spoiler-ish and intense events develop and Drew and Kara are more invested than ever in trying to learn more about the beauty disease and if there’s a cure. They team up with a variety of people who are trying to get the cure out there. Not everyone wants the beauty to be cured though and will do everything possible to make sure Drew and Kara don’t get their hands on the cure.

I love the issues that are brought up in this comic. Society puts such pressure on people to be this unrealistic standard of ‘beautiful’ that if this disease was real – people probably would try and contract it. I feel like it does a great job portraying how these unrealistic beauty standards forced upon us are so dangerous and they could and have seriously hurt people. The other issue I appreciated was how some big pharmaceutical companies care more about money than helping people.

The only issue I had was the ending. I feel it was a touch anti-climatic and abrupt. I was also confused by the skull mask character. However, it wasn’t a huge deal and didn’t take anything away from the actual story. The fate of one character upset me too because I became extremely attached to them.

This was fast paced and so addicting, I couldn’t put it down and read the entire volume in one sitting. I highly recommend this if you’re a fan of beautiful art and great storytelling. I feel like I’m forgetting to say something because my mind is such a mess from the sheer genius and beauty of this comic. The issues are available individually here. GO CHECK IT OUT NOW!

MY RATING: ★★★★☆