The Lab

by Allison Conway

Overview

This "silent" graphic novel follows a nameless subject trapped in a nightmarish test facility, raising unsettling questions of exploitation and oppression.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603094610
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Allison Conway is an illustrator and cartoonist living in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Illustration in 2016. She has worked with clients like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and Yale University, and for over two years has published a comic strip in Vice about a pillbug named Millie. She grew up in the woods of Lake Geneva, WI and has always had a passion for animals and living organisms of all sizes. The Lab is her first graphic novel.

You can find more of her work at allistrations.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/16/2020

Conway’s debut, a grim, silent science fiction fable, unfolds with deliberate, anxiety-producing pacing, though it’s narratively slight. A slender, big-headed humanoid, its only features two pained-seeming eyes, pines away in a grimy cell alongside countless identical figures in identical cells. From time to time, mechanical claws carry them away to laboratories and subject them to automated experiments involving beakers, tanks, and syringes of colored liquids. Nothing else apparently exists in their gray, robotic world. After a seeming eternity of torture, the prisoners haltingly plan an escape. Told in large or often full-page wordless panels, the simple, organic-looking art, with densely cross-hatched shading and sparsely applied but jarring colors—red blood; purple and yellow test tube goo—evokes the scale of the massive test facility. Pathos builds up as the spindly, ugly-cute figures collect bruises and scars. By design, the comic lacks defined characters, and repetition replaces plot complexity, which pares the story down to its basics but also leaves it with little to say—the dreary exercise simply moves through the machinery of its premise. But, as a shuddery dystopian nightmare goes, it’s nicely crafted, with skillful bare-bones art. From this unnerving first outing, Conway shows herself to be a creator worth watching. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

04/01/2020

DEBUT A humanoid figure whose big round head is featureless, save for its remarkably expressive eyes, awakens in a dark gray cell—one of many, we soon discover, inside an infinitely vast laboratory. A mechanical arm plucks our protagonist from its cage and carries it to another area, where it is restrained as various colorful liquids are poured into both eyes. Upon being returned to its cell, our protagonist curls into a ball, miserable and degraded. When it awakens the next day, its eyes are a swollen mess. The mechanical arm comes again, but this time instead of having liquids poured into both eyes, our protagonist is subjected to numerous injections. The process repeats again and again, until one day it doesn't. Conway's debut is light on plot but packed with pathos and deeply affecting owing to her masterly visual storytelling. Each moment of our protagonist's degradation is depicted at a snail's pace over numerous panels and pages, highlighting the mechanical, repetitive process of this endless torture, building to an ending that is not quite cathartic but a relief nonetheless in that new possibilities are presented. VERDICT An unsettling vision from an exciting and distinctly talented newcomer.

Library Journal

04/17/2020

Gr 10 Up—This wordless graphic novel follows the plight of a nameless, genderless human in captivity. Dirty, naked, and alone, the human lives in a small room with an overflowing toilet, a dog bowl full of water, and a tray of mystery mush. Although the lack of natural light makes the passage of time unclear, each new "day" sees the human pulled from their cell by a mechanical hand and taken to a lab to be subjected to inhumane experiments, then returned to their cell, sick, hopeless, and traumatized. When it is revealed that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others are being subjected to the same torture, the human manages to escape. However, the relative safety of the outside world is not what it seems. Conway is an excellent visual storyteller, leaving readers with a growing sense of dread. By keeping the protagonist nameless and devoid of defining features, the author/illustrator drives home the dehumanization of the test subjects. Relying deftly on a shifting palette, Conway juxtaposes the brutal nature of the cells and the lab against cheerfully bright experimental chemicals. This work of sci-fi brings up concerns about the basic rights of living beings and can be applied to a variety of real-world topics. VERDICT Though there is no bright light at the end of the tunnel and the subject may be too bleak for younger readers, this thought-provoking read will resonate with mature fans of complex dystopian tales.—Lara Goldstein, Forsyth County Public Libraries, NC

School Library Journal