Review by Ian Keogh

There’s a laboratory deep in the remote American heartlands that specialises in genetic experimentation with no ethical boundaries. Via an artificial womb children are bred with the characteristics of other creatures inbuilt as per the sample art. Due to their goat-like legs, they’re known as the Cloven. It will come as no surprise to readers that the purpose is military advancement, although it’s a great shock to the lead scientist in Garth Stein’s exploration of a murky world. The story starts with Tuck, now a teenager and about to make his escape into the wider world.

Matthew Southworth’s previous experience with urban realism on Stumptown makes him ideal for taking on another project set in the real world, except with a twist. He supplies believable, different looking people rather than relying on variations of a generic person, and makes bold decisions regarding colour and lettering effects, these bringing Alex Toth to mind. Southworth’s not the stylist Toth was, but an accomplished storyteller not always taking the obvious route, and splitting The Cloven over three volumes means there’s space for gloriously expressive spreads of the Cloven using their abilities to have joyous runs through Seattle.

Stein ensures plenty of horror, but rather than conventional shock and violence it’s via the sheer inhumanity of people able to view an intelligent being as nothing more than a scientific experiment. Not that the world away from the laboratory life Tuck has led doesn’t have dangers, but he finds himself uniquely able to cope, and proves a very sympathetic lead character, totally bereft of ill intent. However, that’s part of the horror as other events make readers wonder how much of his personality has been manufactured. Journalist Jake Arthur has a role to play in the continuation, but a scene whose only intention is to remind us of his presence is a clumsy insertion. That’s rare in what’s otherwise a very readable action thriller.

The Cloven is a peculiar project to be emerging from Fantagraphics as it’s very much populist genre fiction, a category the company has actively steered clear of. There’s a brief idea the murky morality and a skirt around what it’s like to be homeless in the USA offer a form of social commentary, but mentions are too fleeting to be anything other than building atmosphere and background. Alternating chapters of past and present revealing what Tuck doesn’t know about himself prompts considerable tension setting up Book Two.