Crave

Was on a bit of a horror graphic novel kick when I asked for this, and horror it isn’t but it is quite fascinating social commentary.

On an American college campus a new app gets on to everyone’s phones, Crave.

Crave asks you about your desires and tries to fulfil them, and when this is seen as successful by other users and they join in all hell breaks loose, as do the libidos of all the college aged people… and a few of the older people too.

Interesting section at the start of the story about personality and social media, FOMO, subsumption of personality, projection of best life, and other things that have been said about use of social media though it does feel a bit of a clumsy piece of exposition setting up the rest of the story.

The art style is sumptuous and matches the theme of the story, very lush. Quite a restrained palette of purples, browns and greens occasionally enlivened with a flash of red. The depiction of the world is very restrained as well, with a lot of the panels embracing blank space, then the panels looking at the world and ‘action’ can be extremely details, a really good mix of styles.

Overall and interesting concept executed well with scope to expand into this universe. This definitely gets a bit spicy and there are quite a few panels that are absolutely NSFW. Just thought fair warning.

I was given this on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.