asandwich

Eurgh.

In a post-apocalyptic far-future, a totalitarian society of technologically advanced cyborgs are engaged in a constant battle for the Earth's scant remaining resources with a tribe of spiritual, dinosaur-riding animal/human hybrid people, the Gen. (What do you mean, "this sounds kind of like that Avatar movie"? That was totally different! Those spiritualistic, dinosaur-riding tribes-people were blue - and these are all, like, not blue. And stuff.)

Aphrodite IX - a cybernetically enhanced assassin from Earth's past, placed in stasis for reasons initially unknown - is accidentally discovered and released by Marcus, the heir to the Gen throne. Marcus takes her back to the Gen capital, where an insta-love triangle ensues. Hooray.

Fortunately, the cyborgs learn of a way to take control of Aphrodite's mind for exactly 20 minutes every 24 hours and begin using her to kill all of the Gen leadership. *cue dramatic music*

Good grief.

Derivative, cliché and utterly juvenile, Aphrodite IX is a painful reminder that comics still have a long way to go to be taken seriously. The characters are paper thin, with almost zero believable development or reasons for the reader to actually care. The whole book just feels like a vessel to objectify the female protagonist as often as possible. Which it does. A lot.

Aphrodite even has a 'pheromone mode' which she engages to distract victims with her allure before going in for the kill. This is the most unintentionally hilarious thing I've read in quite some time.

Sigh.

On the plus side, the art is some of the best I've ever seen in a graphic novel (and was the main reason I was drawn to picking this up at the library) - which makes it even more of a shame that everything else is just so mind-numbingly bad.