Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Jonathan Wayshak
Colourist: Jordan Boyd
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $19.99
The Devolution Collection contains the first five issues of the Devolution saga plus lots of neat extras like original sketches and, for those who have never seen one before, the actual script for #1. What, you thought the artist just made this stuff up out of thin air?
The Devolution Collection is set in a world where every living creature on Earth has been devolved, we have Neanderthals waging bloody war on each other, dinosaurs, sabre tooth tigers and all sorts of prehistoric monsters plus Raja, one of the few remaining ‘Still Sapiens’ who is making her way through this devolved nightmare to San Francisco where she hopes to find the antidote to the DVO-8 Viral Agent causing all this chaos .Throw in a few Nazi Hillbillies and you have your basic Planet of the Apes-esque dystopian quest for survival.
The alternative cover for Devolution #1, reprinted in this volume, even gives a nod to its simian inspiration but this is harder hitting in its depiction of a humanity tearing itself apart and using God as its excuse for savagery and hatred. When scientists develop a formula designed to neuter that part of the brain holding the belief in God the solution turned out to be worse than the problem since it also rewound the evolutionary clock and tipped the world into a prehistoric meltdown.
If bad language, sex, nudity and graphic violence offends you, this is definitely not your thing, but for the rest of us, this is a remarkable tour de force from Rick Remender and Jonathan Wayshak, being both intelligent and graphic in every sense of the word. The world may have gone to Hell, but Devolution Collection is comic book Heaven.
Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker