Review by Ian Keogh

Co-writers Sal Simeone and Steve Simeone apply the horror film template to Eve of Extinction, first showing a scene of grim slaughter on a cruise liner before switching to suburban Houston where the main cast are going about their everyday business. A hurricane is about to hit the city, and the rain that accompanies it turns people into monsters. A desperate race against time follows as a mother and a stepmother have to bury their differences to assure their daughter’s safety.

There’s very little originality to Eve of Extinction. Things happen because it’s convenient for them to occur, the primary offender being that only men are transformed by the rain into monsters, which there’s no attempt to explain. Perhaps it’s meant to be an allegory about threatening masculinity affecting women wherever they go, but if so it’s trivial and hardly explored. Tension is perpetuated by the struggle of the mothers to first locate, then rescue their daughter. Given the threats that manifest, it sure is lucky one of them happens to be a chemical engineer and the other has an aggressive, punch first personality.

Nik Virella is the sole cover credited artist, despite Isaac Goodheart drawning a third of the book by completing the final two chapters. Their styles broadly mesh once Goodheart stops using a six panel grid, but they have a very different way of portraying the monsters. Goodheart’s are more defined and inflated, while those supplied by Virella are strange distortions of humans, instilling the greater fear for still just about resembling people.

The lack of originality is a great shame given the oversized pages and well designed package, for some mystifying reason listed on Amazon as a box set.