Review: Crave #1 (of 6)

The idea of a phone app controlling kids or playing with their minds has been a pretty recent horror trope. The idea of the unseen, yet seeing all type of omni-presence can get right under our skin. Couple that with the idea of social media promising much in an erstwhile pseudo cat-fish manner fighting the desire for clicks, shares, likes and retweets that seems to drive so many social media platforms; Crave examines all the above in the tinder box that is university life.

Amongst a elite university a new app, Crave, sets desires alight as it states quite simply “tell us what you crave. Follow the instructions and you will get what you want.” Its all very Mr Morden! Though as the classmates indulge in their basest of desires, stakes are raised with hearts and lives at risk; or should that be at risqué?

You may have seen Maria Llovet’s work in Faithless and its sequel, imaginatively titled Faithless II. Here Llovet pulls triple duty as writer, artist and letterer. The result is an extension, of sorts, of the key art beats. Taking the writing first, Llovet spends a lot of time setting up the various characters situations and their various wants. It might seem that they all want the same, hook-ups, but it is how they go about it that gets as much focus. Added into the mix is sone keenly observed pros and cons of social media, that look to challenge why people would go to extreme lengths at the behest of an unknown person; are we really that focused on sex, even previously unattainable sex that we would risk everything? In some corners of social media, the answer is a resounding yes!

Whilst Llovet has developed her writing skills, her art remains fantastic in an unapologetically fetish like manner, with scratchy lines delineating the troubled youths. Llovet does make use of faceless figures which is a little unsettling, though is quite a normal practice for some big publishers. Of course where Llovet goes, so does the extrapolation of sex, be it the unbridled heat of that which you thought you could never touch or taste or something more heartfelt. Bondage is featured as part of being something taboo, a temptation without context other than fuel for an erotic fire. Fans of Llovet, as I am, will enjoy her usual high standard of work, which also carries on through the somewhat faded colors and lettering that creeps across the page, hiding insidious intent in plain sight.

Having any one person create the entirety of the book could lead to flights of fancy or needless digressions. In Llovet however, I feel that despite the first issue wanderings of world building, the keenly viewed impact of social media and its twisting of people’s perceptions of their world is going to make this book bigger than either of the Faithless series.

Writing – 5 Stars
Art & colors – 5 Stars

Overall – 5 Stars

Created by; Maria Llovet
Logo design by; Jesús Orellana
Published by; Image Comics

Author Profile

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes

I am a long time comic book fan, being first introduced to Batman in the mid to late 70's. This led to a appreciation of classic artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. Moving through the decades that followed, I have a working knowledge of a huge raft of characters with a fondness for old school characters like JSA and The Shadow

Currently reading a slew of Bat Books, enjoying a mini Marvel revival, and the host of The Definative Crusade and Outside the Panels whilst also appearing on No-Prize Podcast on the Undercover Capes Podcast Network