By Ariel Baska — This is a harrowing and relentless debut from Allison Conway, and it follows a newly-minted big-headed biped on a twisted journey through a sinister lab. Notably, the narrative is completely silent of commentary, except for the pathos wrung from our protagonist’s small, pained eyes. Those eyes are the first lights we see in the cross-hatched gray and black nothingness from which the vision of the lab emerges. 

The artwork clearly suggests that this is a science fiction fable. The every-organism is packed into a grayish purple world of glass cages and mechanical arms that yank and pinch and pin and is attacked by the inhuman machines in a way that allows the reader to sympathize quickly with this humanoid. As the protagonist suffers through forced injections, gassing, and smothering from oozy substances of four colors (yellow, blue, red, and green), the count of scars, burns, and other injuries rises. 

To a certain extent, this vilification of the four-color realm would seem to imply that everything and everyone in this world is considered complicit in the cruelty of this lab. At the same time, these four inks seem to represent a dangerous, toxic beauty. A four-color torture that you have certain suspicions about by the end. 

This graphic novel succeeds in its simplicity, opting to detail the repetition of the process of waking to the pain, to the inexorable arm that drags, to the processing table, to yet another harrowing sequence. The Sisyphean nature of these events feels as psychologically disquieting to the reader as I suspect, was intended. 

The beginning of Act 3, which I won’t ruin here, feels unearned by either the character or the author. Nonetheless, this last act is integral to the message of the story, and makes the novel one worth reading. Some reviewers have complained that plot development is slight, but a text like this focuses more on perspective than plot. Individual panes see through the eyes of our big-headed friend, others see only a speck where we know our friend to be. All-in-all, as an allegory on man’s inhumanity to man and man’s relationship to nature, it succeeds.

Overall: Allison Conway’s debut graphic novel The Lab is a textless but relentless take on the life of a bipedal lab rat. Good for a long hard look at the human race. 8.6/10

The Lab Graphic Novel Review

The Lab
Writer/Artist: Allison Conway
Publisher: Top Shelf / IDW Publishing
Price: $19.99
The Lab is a wordless visual journey into the grim machinery of exploitation. Its nameless protagonist is held in solitary captivity, alternately poked, prodded, starved, drugged, and worse. Brief glimpses of other test subjects, undergoing their own ordeals, are few and far between. But is all this abuse and isolation purely arbitrary? Or is there a purpose? Painstakingly and evocatively rendered, Allison Conway's debut graphic novel explores the spectrum between lifeless gray and vivid color. It asks uncomfortable questions about the treatment we tolerate and the injustices underlying our modern world.
Release Date: June 17, 2020
Buy It Digitally: The Lab via comiXology

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Ariel Baska pretends to know many things. And yeah, she has a pop culture podcast, Ride the Omnibus. Which may or may not be exactly as pretentious as you think.