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‘The Beauty’- Cronenbergian crime drama explores dark side of beauty

‘The Beauty’- Cronenbergian crime drama explores dark side of beauty


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The Beauty #1-2 (2015)
Written by Jeremy Haun & Jason A. Hurley
Art by Jeremy Haun
Colors by John Rauch
Lettering & Design by Fonografiks
Published by Image Comics

There’s a new STD going around these days. Catch it, and you will be beauty personified. No fat, perfect skin, great hair. The only problem? It will eventually kill you. Two detectives, Sara Vaughn and Dick Foster are on the case to solve the mystery of the Beauty and will find them at odds with government conspiracies and anti-Beauty hate groups. Cronenberg body horror meets CSI in this new Image series.

The Beauty is about our society’s obsession with beauty, and in this regard, explores two aspects of obsession: the lengths people will go to be beautiful, and the love/hate dichotomy of being obsessed with beautiful people.

It might seem extreme that anyone would contract an STD in order to be beautiful, but already people spend millions on beauty products, Botox, tanning, and diet programs. Some people are so desperate to be beautiful that they will even starve themselves. They will go to any lengths, even destructive ones. The Beauty symbolizes this with the STD and its resulting head explosions.

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The other aspect, the love/hate dichotomy is subtler and more sinister. In The Beauty, half of America is infected with the Beauty, and people continue to seek it. The other half hates it, resulting in violent anti-Beauty hate groups. Even some people infected with Beauty hate it. Sara Vaughn hates having the Beauty so much she vents her anger with cursing and drastic actions on duty. While investigating a Beauty sex club, Vaughn regards the other Beauties with disgust and says they make it easy to hate them. Dick Foster contracts the Beauty from his wife. It sends him into a rage and he smashes everything in the house. These scenes illustrate how society glorifies beauty so much that people become obsessed with those deemed beautiful (i.e., thin and perfect bodies), and insecurity results in wanting to be and hating the beautiful people enough to harm them.

While The Beauty does a good job of exploring these concepts of beauty obsession, it struggles with keeping them in a workable narrative. Issue 1 does a great job of introducing the world. Panels 1-3 show crowded streets with Beauties mixed with non-Beauties, caption boxes explain what the Beauty is and how it infected the world. In these pages, the comic introduces the basis of the story without slowing down the narrative.

When Foster and Vaughn are introduced, the story becomes muddled. They are not complex characters, only reacting to situations and not exploring other parts of their lives. Foster doesn’t show a wide range of emotion and is quite boring until the incident with his wife. Vaughn has a little more emotion, but it doesn’t evolve beyond either “Grr, I am angry woman!” or “Oh God! Having the Beauty is so, SO horrible!” This flaw might have been compensated for if either detective had interesting investigative skills, but all they do is go to a place and conveniently stumble upon evidence.

The art is detailed and realistic. Much like a Cronenberg film, Haun captures the monotonous, plain environments of urban cities. Also like Cronenberg, the gory bits are quite effective. The head explosions caused by the Beauty are fairly violent. Even more disturbing are the resulting corpses. Despite their gray and decayed state, they remain attractive. It’s unnerving and the implications of the attraction are best left to Freud. Some readers might not be fond of the art, not because it is bad, but there is nothing special about it outside of  it being detailed and realistic.

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Also, there are huge differences between the art in Issue 1 and 2, both with drawbacks. Issue 1 is highly detailed and captures a dark atmosphere, but overuses shadow and covers up a lot of character’s eyes. Issue 2 addresses this issue by replacing shadow with brighter colors. The only problem is that telling between Beauties and non-Beauties is impossible. Issue 1 had the Beauties with lighter skin, something that the artist should consider reintroducing.

Despite issues with the story and art, The Beauty is a promising, high-concept horror/scifi comic. Given time, the story and art will improve. It already explores the darker side of beauty obsession, and looks to go even deeper into the horrid rabbit hole.

 

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