“I’m starving, darling, let me put my lips to something, let me wrap my teeth around the world”
That’s a fun title — Eat Your Young is brought to us by writer Brian Buccellato, artist Mattia Monaco, letter Buddy Beaudoin, and editor Teodoro Leo. It’s published by Mad Cave, costs $19.99, and is 134 pages long.
Buccellato has an interesting if a bit convoluted idea for the story: there’s an immortal dude, Edmund Irons, who’s the head of a family of immortals — 
he’s had a lot of kids, of course, all of whom are immortal. Every 100 years, for a little less than a month, (27.5 days, specifically), everyone becomes mortal, and anyone can challenge Edmund — the alpha — for control of the family. They need to kill him, and if they do, they become the alpha and the clock resets, but every other child loses their immortality. Edmund has been the alpha for over 2000 years, and he’s tired and wants to die — it’s unclear if no one has challenged him over the years because he’s such a righteous dude or if he’s killed all the challengers because he’s such a righteous dude — and he designates his youngest kid, Elsa, as the heir. This does not go over well with some of the more unhinged children in his family. The main bad guy is Kerr, a huge dude with a fiery red beard, but there’s also the serial killer and the incestuous twins, all of whom want their shot. Some of the kids don’t mind losing their immortality, and they’re willing to help Edmund defend Elsa, who is shot early in the book — before she loses her immortality, so she doesn’t die — and needs people looking out for her because, you know, she’s a kid. And so the battle lines are drawn!
This is a fairly entertaining comic, which is nice. It’s a somewhat standard “everyone must die” kind of thing that fiction writers enjoy, and Buccellato does some decent things with it. We get a few flashbacks to show how the some of the kids relate to each other, and there’s even a character who has no idea he’s immortal and doesn’t have much time to think about it before his half-siblings start trying to kill him, which is a nice touch. However, there are some issues with it which make it frustrating. 
Early on, the biggest problem is the same one I always have with these kinds of stories — you know, where it’s a winner-take-all kind of thing and there are lots of characters — because we’re supposed to believe that everyone is equally important even though a lot of them are going to be dispatched quickly. I don’t really have that big an issue with the early purge in this book, but one character is clearly supposed to be important, yet Buccellato gets rid of them very quickly. That’s fine and dandy, except we don’t really get a sense of why their death is a big one or why they were so important in the first place, so it really doesn’t have an impact. I mean, none of the early deaths do, but in stories like these, they’re not really supposed to — they’re just clearing the dead wood. It just feels like we could have gotten a bit more with this particular character, though. Another thing is that this book doesn’t actually end. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was clear that Buccellato was setting up a sequel, but it doesn’t feel like he is. It reaches a big climax, sure, but it’s not the one we’ve been promised, with a child fighting their father for leadership of the clan. Buccellato gives us a feint, which can be fine, but it’s not like he’s writing a complex mystery here — we are promised an apocalyptic showdown between people who were immortal and might be again, yet we get a completely different kind of apocalyptic showdown and then Buccellato says, “Yeah, then some other stuff happened.” It has a real “They were rescued by … oh, let’s say Moe” energy, except it’s not a joke. It’s a good, action-packed, violent conclusion, it’s just … not really what we want. There’s also the big bad, Kerr, who dominates a bunch of others who ally themselves with him, which makes little sense. If he kills his father and becomes immortal, all of them will be mortal and get nothing, so why are they helping him? I get he’s scary, but a few people have the drop on him and they don’t kill him, which seems silly. Come on, people! The early massacre is silly, too, as the victims know it’s after midnight and therefore they know they’re mortal and they know Kerr is nuts, yet they seem surprised that he starts killing them. 
Come on, people!
Still, it’s a fun book, and that’s partly due to Monaco’s frenetic artwork. He uses a heavy line and is often messy (on purpose) to make this world ragged and violent, and his characters are quite neat. There are a lot of characters, and while Buccellato has some issues giving them good personalities, Monaco does a nice job distinguishing them from each other. His action scenes work really well — he choreographs them very nicely, and he uses heavy hatching and he becomes a bit more abstract in the action to add heft to the violence. He also does a nice job with the settings, especially when the book goes into flashbacks, as Monaco gives us a good sense of New York both in the present and the past. It’s a cool-looking book, and it makes the story work a bit better, even with some of the disappointments.
I don’t know why Buccellato chose to tell the story this way. It’s not the greatest plot, sure, but it’s not a terrible one, and it could easily work, but Buccellato seems to drop the ball a bit. The art is very keen, and the comic is entertaining, it just seems … incomplete. Too bad!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
