It is the beginning of creation, and God’s two chosen have been living peacefully in the Garden, not a care in the world. Until one fateful day, that is, when Adam disappears, abducted from Paradise. On her own, and lacking any knowledge of the world outside the Garden, Eve decides that she will go on a quest to find her beloved. Baffled and bewitched, Eve takes on demons, monsters, and other nasties in the hopes of finding her husband. But will the quest require the ultimate sacrifice: eating from the tree of knowledge?

As far as strange concepts for graphic novels go, EVE is right there at the top for recent memory. What Howard has done here is not set out to contradict the Christian Bible; instead, EVE sort of… supplements it. He also splashes in plenty of the Apocrypha to round out his tale. And, in its own strange way, it feels like a distant prequel to Howard’s DEAD @17 series. The difference here is that Eve is not quite a warrior- she knows some things, but she also knows that sometimes running away is the best possible result you can hope to achieve, and that’s quite a rarity in comics.

Eve is also pretty smart, and Howard sort of turns her into a character who defines “growing into her own power” making Eve something of a proto-feminist, even with her obsession about her husband. The book looks good, as Howard has really refined his work over the years. When I read the first issue of this in pamphlet format, it felt too slight, but as a completed story in a graphic novel, it reads just fine.