Millennium Fever

Going into this 4 issue mini from DC's Vertigo imprint, I figured from the title it would be about the changing of the millennium that so many people were dreading back in the late 90's. In actuality, it really doesn't have anything to do with the changing of the millennium. Really, I don't know what the title has to do with the content of the series at all, but whatever.

This odd title written by Nick Abadzis starts off as a coming of age story. Boys in high school want to appear to have a large sexual prowess with the ladies, yet most actually don't. Here we have a young man, still a virgin, desperately looking to find a girlfriend... and he does! In answering a personal ad he meets the woman of his dreams and they hit it off wonderfully.

So at this point in the story, I'm pretty much bored to tears, but then something weird happened. When the couple goes into the bedroom for the first time to, you know, "do it" you see the lovely ladies fingers... grow... and then it flashes to the next day. This little thing managed to pull my attention back to the story, and as the story unfolded even further you see that this is a story of a cosmic scale. Apparently humans need to evolve or be left behind when our world merges with some uber multiverse.

That's quite a bit of a jump in focus and to be completely honest, it made the first part of the story seem completely inconsequential. It really only matters because the mysterious woman is actually the manifestation of a being from another realm of the multiverse. The whole multiverse thing and humans evolving in order to survive all just seemed wonky to me. I love cosmic storytelling, but this just didn't have the impact on me that it took for me to care.

The message behind the story is also pretty heavy handed. The real moral of the story is that we have to get beyond our pettiness, fears, and insecurities so that we can move beyond what we are and become "evolved" human beings. I didn't need this mini to tell me that we'll be better people if we move beyond our weaknesses.

If you're a Vertigo completist or have a hankering to read a subpar cosmic story, well, here's the perfect mini for you! If you're like me, you'll pass it over unless you can find it in a quarter bin somewhere. At that price, it might be worth a look simply because it's better than 90% of the other crap that'll be with it in that same bin.

Ratings
Art: 3
Story: 2
Overall: 2.5