The Beauty

The Beauty is a fascinating horror comic at the intersection of body horror and disease. A disease has spread that transforms the infected into a conventionally beautiful version of themself. But is this disease, The Beauty, too good to be true? I'm enjoying both the art and storyline. I think it's a pretty short run, and I definitely feel like the pacing is a bit quick, but I'm excited to see where this one goes. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

2.5 stars

The cover attracted me. It's gorgeously creepy. It's a dystopian tale. It seems to have social commentary. So I went out on a limb and tried it.

It's okay. The art is decent, but not as glorious as the cover art. I hate that. Like Tokyopop's ‘Labyrinth' manga, with cover art by Shurei Kouyu-sensei–and lackluster art inside. It's basically like the comic blows its wad on the cover, although the inside art is all right.

And when I read the intro, I expected some horror.

No, that will not be the case, at least for the first few chapters. It's a buddy cop thriller in which a new STI has emerged, one that makes the infected beautiful. People actually want to catch this disease. But eventually, people start spontaneously combusting because of it. There's big pharma/political conspiracies here; it's a thriller more than horror, which is disappointing. The two main characters are all right but bland, and the plot is pretty standard procedural genre tropes. One of the villains of the arc is supposed to be a big bad, but he's only in it for a few pages–just enough to heavy-handedly know he's a nasty piece of work–but then he dies before we learn anything about him, so he's really pointless.

The idea behind this graphic novel could have been interesting, but the execution was mediocre. I'll probably HPB this one at some point, or donate it to the library. But I might look into it to see if it improves any. If it does, I'll hang onto it.