Five years in the future, 2022, a woman has a sharp coughing pain. She is admitted into the hospital and over the span of a year 5 trillion people are dead. They’re calling it the Mississippi Delta Virus. Turns out that pregnancies are also effected by the virus. Every woman that has given birth with MDV has resulted in a still-birth. It takes some time for a vaccine to be created, but it finally happens in 2035 and is all thanks to Dr. Cylus Crane who specializes in genetics.
Now that you’re caught up we see Cylus and his husband Samir in a pretty insane looking lab. Together they are admiring their babies. Ok, they aren’t ALL their babies, but Dr. Crane takes credit, and he should. If not for the vaccine he developed for MDV all pregnancies would still result in babies being still-born. At this point there have still been no successful live births, but things are looking very hopeful.
Samir and Cylus then reflect on everything that brought them to this point. And, the next thing we see is Dr. Cylus Crane being interviewed by what appears to be a news station. Here you will get to see the details of what happened when MDV hit with full strength. You will learn how the rich were treated. Of course you will learn how to poor were treated. And, some things you will expect looking at America’s past history and some present things happening. I don’t want to ruin any of these plot points, but they are all the key to motivate Dr. Crane. You can tell he is ridiculously passionate about saving the human race.
Nine days later Dr. Crane goes back to Arcadia. We see a woman giving birth. The couple seems very hopeful this time that the baby will be healthy. You can tell they have tried before and were unsuccessful. But, this time things take a turn for the better it seems. They have a healthy baby girl, the first living baby to be born in America in 10 years actually. Dr. Crane thinks this baby girl is absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately the parents of the newborn disagree.
At the conclusion of issue 1 we see Dr. Crane travelling to show off his success to his colleagues at Gonring-Cole Medical Campus. Everyone that helped develop the MDV vaccine with Dr. Crane has been gathered here and are looking forward to hearing his successful story. Dr. Crane confirms that there are finally healthy babies being born in America again. But, his colleagues are more concerned about the baby’s physical appearance. All of them seem to have the same disfigurements no matter what their genetic background is. Is Dr. Crane really the hero here?
You’ll have to pick up this issue to learn what happens next. I really enjoyed this story because these are all things that could theoretically happen. I think that at the core of successful horror the more likely something is to be possible, the more terrifying it is. This story is obviously fiction, and there are some aspects that are far-fetched. But, overall, it’s not THAT far from something that could happen in reality. There were also some twists and turns that I didn’t expect. Pick this one up at your local comic shop.
Eugenic #1 Rating: 9.5/10
