“What’s so special about a picture of a dumb sloth anyways?” is a question Aaron Sumner asks himself in the beginning of the Memetic series by James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan.

Tall, thin, and dark haired Aaron Sumner and his blond boyfriend Ryan Nowak are typical college students. They met in high school when Ryan was a freshman and Aaron a junior. It was love at first sight for Ryan. An only child, Aaron’s parents are scientists. Ryan’s family is boring if not typical. His father is some sort of business man while any detail about his mother is a mystery. There are two other Nowak sons. As is usually the case in real life, Ryan was afraid of coming out to any of his family members.

Their majors, interests, and hobbies remain a mystery and of little importance. The world as they know it is about to collapse and descend into horror. And they’ve had a fight just the night before. The means of that chaos is delivered through what appears to be a simple meme of a sloth surrounded by a halo of vibrating colors. The meme appears early one morning on Reddit and quickly goes viral. All it takes is a glance for people to begin to feel euphoric and obsessed with looking at it. However, Aaron is immune to its effects due to having Blue cone monochromatism, a rare, inherited retinal disorder that results in severely impaired color vision, extreme light sensitivity, and involuntary eye movements. Aaron is also hard of hearing. Growing up with these two traits led Aaron to feel as if he’s an outsider and having two parents who were more concerned about their research than their child only reinforced Aaron’s alienation.

At Ryan’s suggestion, the two young men decide to spend the night in an abandoned luxury condo. Sheltered from the chaos and violence in the streets Aaron comes up with the simplest of plans to make a life together. Ryan, on the other hand, is being much more of a realist under the truly horrific and mysterious circumstances that are transpiring and has decided on a different course of action if only for himself. As the story continues on Aaron displays much more courage and bravery than he could have imagined for himself only days before.

While Memetic was published over a decade ago as of this writing the fate of Aaron and Ryan won’t be spoiled here just in case anyone decides to seek out the series.

Sumner and Nowak both first appear in Memetic #1 published by Boom Studios. Both are created by James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan. Art by Donovan and Adam Guzowski.

Memetic was originally published as a three part series published in 2014 and collected in 2015. In 2015 it was given the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book. It was followed by two series, Cognetic and Eugenic, to complete the trilogy.

All rights reserved James Tynion IV