Juvenile #1: Life and Death as a Teenager

“Adolescence sucks.” Those are some of the earliest words in Juvenile #1, a series that makes being a teenager a literal matter of life and death. This first issue sets forth an interesting idea but suffers somewhat from information overload.

Terrorists released chemical weapons 21 years before Juvenile #1 begins. The weapons resulted in a virus that kills children as they advanced through adolescence. Now surgeries and medication extend lives further, but only by a matter of months. And children grow up in “centers” that provide these medical interventions. Sara lives in El Castillo, one of the oldest centers. Day to day life in the facility is awkward at best, unpleasant at worst. Sara’s life is hell. And it gets more complicated with the arrival of a new delinquent boy named Max.

Juvenile #1 transforms the usual angst of adolescence into a literal life and death situation. That concept in and of itself is fun because a teenager’s raging emotions often make every disappointment and failure feel like the end of the world.

The issue’s opening page offers sixteen caption boxes that deliver exposition leading up to the beginning of Juvenile #1’s actual story. As far as setting the stage for what is going on in this world, the exposition works. However, the attempt to be comprehensive results in some unanswered questions hanging over the entire rest of the issue as potential distractions from the ongoing story. Though counterintuitive under the circumstances, this is a situation where less very well have been more.

Exposition provided through Max’s introduction is more successful. He provides more of a micro level view of the facility, its inhabitants, and the experience these early teens face in the world as it now exists. Max’s interactions, especially with Sara, help build a mystery that all may not be as it seems.

Coloring communicates more in Juvenile #1 than perhaps anything else. Almost everything in the issue is depicted in various shades of beige. The teenagers’ clothing, their surroundings, and the adults in charge of the facility look lifeless. Bright colors standout by contrast, and it’s easy for the eye to lock on to them as important. The teens’ skin tone and hair mark them as separate from everything and everyone else. The bright red medication is like a flashing light of danger. But most striking are the clothes Max wears when he arrives. Entering from outside the facility, Max is wearing a red and black shirt with greenish cargo pants. Everything about his appearance screams, “I AM IMPORTANT.”

A colorful mural of a cartoonish day and night scape separated by a rainbow adorns one wall in the facility’s common room. Set against the emotionally empty beiges surrounding it, the mural feels at once hopeful and torturous.

This punctuating color extends to thought bubbles as well. Until Juvenile #1’s final pages, Sara is the only character whose internal monologue is available to readers and it is depicted in bright green thought bubbles. Like Max’s clothes, the issue tells us that Sara is IMPORTANT.

These color choices almost certainly define what will be critical to the series as it goes on. Obviously, the teenagers matter to the world. But what does Max bring to the table that he deserves such a visually loud introduction? Does the medication’s red color signal danger? Is the coloring of the thought bubbles important in some way or is it merely a way to set thoughts apart from dialogue and the characters who are thinking apart from each other?