'Eve,' New Comic Book Series by Professor Victor LaValle, Coming This Spring

By
Nicole Saldarriaga
February 26, 2021
Cartoon illustration of young character and living teddy bear

Boom! Studios recently announced that Eve, a new five-issue original comic book series by Associate Professor and alumnus Victor LaValle '98 and artist Jo Mi-Gyeong, will be released in May of 2021. 

Eve is set in an all-too-possible near future where the environmental crisis has come to a head—the polar ice caps have melted, wiping out most of humanity through both the environmental consequences and the hidden disease that was unleashed as they crumbled. The titular character, an eleven year old girl named Eve, wakes up from the virtual reality she's known all her life to a world that is falling apart, and she finds herself on a dangerous cross-country journey, along with her android teddy bear, to save her father's life—and potentially the planet as well. 

According to Eric Harburn, Senior Editor of Boom! Studios, "Victor is a visionary writer who brings a sense of realism and heart to the sci-fi and horror stories he crafts. He and Jo have created a beautiful, haunting world for Eve that is no less prophetic for being fictional, in a series that addresses one of the most pressing concerns of humanity today." 

For LaValle, Eve is a way of grappling with a question that many people are asking, especially now—what kind of planet are we leaving for our children?—and he was inspired by young environmental activists like Mari Copeny, Elsa Mengistu, Greta Thunberg and others to create a world in which an eleven year old girl is the last hope for our planet. "I didn't want to write some grim story about how [the planet] went to hell," said LaValle, "I wanted to write a story about how we let the planet fall apart and left it to the younger generations to fix it." 

The first issue of Eve features cover art by Ario Anindito (Star Wars: The High Republic) and two variant covers designed by Yuko Shimizu (Dracula, Motherfxxker) and Inhyuk Lee (Magic, Mighty Morphin). Physical copies of the first issue will be available at local comic book stores in May 2021. This website can be used to find your nearest comic book store. Digital copies will also be available through sites like iBooks and Google Play. 

Victor LaValle’s most recent novel is The Changeling. It has been named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by Time Magazine and USA Today and was a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and more. He is also the author of Slapboxing with Jesus, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the writer/creator of the comic book, Destroyer. His awards include the Whiting Writers Award, a USA Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shirley Jackson Award and a British World Fantasy Award among others.

Comic character in a glass chamber with wires extending from it into a surrounding forest