When is it wrong to be normal? Why would you want to be outstanding in a town where people like that end up missing? For Keisha in issue five of ‘Generation Zero’ she wants to be anything but ordinary – to the point where she forgets her one major responsibility. In attempting to find out what happened to her dead boyfriend Keisha has forgotten her younger brother. He’s a special boy who’s used to routine. He likes normalcy and Keisha picking him up from school is normal. The thing is she casually throws off getting her brother. What this normal teenager doesn’t seem to understand is regardless if you have abilities or not, you still have to handle your business.
And yet, the standoff here between the Rook police and Cronus’ crew speaks more of the ignorance of the society around them. Think about this, a citizenry chooses to hand over their freedom to a conglomeration to get out of financial debt. And no one sees that they’re all living a lie. The drinks their kids are ingesting are being polluted, and then there are the Cornermen who seem to snatch powerful or potential psiots and put them in some sort of never-where. Rook Michigan is a scary place and all Keisha is concerned about is matching up to a group of teens who’re raised to be weapons. Apparently this world disregards their children. It’s a powerful statement that Fred Van Lente is making.
Children are important, they should matter. When Keisha forgets her brother, she is mirroring the behavior of her father. In the meantime, Adele confronts her father about her abduction, but he’s too concerned with making money to notice. Then she demands something of him that makes you wonder just who’s in charge. No one except Cronus and the rest of Generation Zero actually care about what’s happening to the children. After all it’s why Keisha called them in the first place. No one would listen to her, so she reached out. And now she is enacting the same mistakes of the adults around her. When a society throws away their children they have no hope of having a viable future. And what Generation Zero lacks in a moral compass, they more than make up for in bringing the pain. They forcefully make the adults around them understand that their age does not equal a low IQ.
Keisha’s father (who happens to be the head of the Rook’s sheriff department) is directly in their way. His job also puts him at direct odds of being a parent. You know he’s owned by Adele’s father. He’s not in control of his own life. Still the one thing he could keep safe and intact he won’t do. As a result, he loses his family.
Lente is playing the long game here. And with the last page you only get more mystery with no answers. In the five issues he’s questioned this microcosm of society through philosophy, the idea of a lost childhood and being demeaned because of your age. It’s a lot to absorb, particularly when there’s also a juicy mystery to be solved. But that what good literature does. It makes you question where you are in the world. Are the child or the adult?
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