Memetic is a 3-issue horror comic book published by Boom! Studios in 2014. It is written by James Tynion IV and illustrated by Eryk Donovan. It is the first part of James Tynion IV's "Apocalyptic Trilogy" pseudo-trilogy, followed by Cognetic and Eugenic.
What if Memetic Mutation could cause The End of the World as We Know It? This is what happens when a mysterious image suddenly appears on the internet, that seems to cause a state of bliss in whoever is looking at it and causes them to compulsively share it online.
Not everyone is affected by this meme however, such as the protagonist, colorblind college student Aaron Sumner. People become increasingly obsessed with the meme and then something terrible starts to happen to everyone who shared it. Meanwhile, legally blind war veteran Marcus Shaw is trying to make sense of what is happening and remembers an essay about "memetic warfare" he read years before while in the Army. Who created this meme and for what purpose? Can a meme be stopped once it goes viral in the whole world? Is this the beginning of a Zombie Apocalypse or something even worse?
In January 2020 Lionsgate announced they bought the rights to the comic book to make a movie; it will be produced by Boom! Studios and Seth Rogen's Point Grey and written by Mattson Tomlin.
Memetic contains examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Taken to the most literal extreme, as by the end of the comic virtually the entire human species has been melded together into gigantic flesh-amoebas that can do nothing else but scream! The screaming serves as a Brown Note of its own as well.
- Assimilation Plot: Apparently the meme was invented by aliens who took advantage of humanity's ability to propagate thoughts and ideas in order to turn them into some sort of Hive Mind physically fused together and living in a perpetual state of bliss. The actual purpose is unknown, though it may be postulated that uniting a planet's main bioform into dense, centralized flesh piles would provide for easy harvest and subsequent consumption of said bioforms...
- Bald of Authority: Such a character is a member of Marcus' team that is traveling to find the meme's origin. He's the first one to die.
- Black Dude Dies First: The first on-panel victim of the "Screamers" is Bastian, a black boy and one of Aaron's college friends.
- Bland-Name Product: An unusual example. Since the story is about a meme, major social networks are referenced, but whereas their actual names are used in the word balloons, every time they appear on the page they are fictional sites such as "Raddit", "Gaggle", "Stumblr" etc.
- Body Horror: People who get influenced by the meme after 12 hours start leaking blood from their eyes, start screaming like mad and become murderous and uncontrollable. The final stage of the mutation causes everyone to climb on each other and fuse together in enormous spires of flesh. Still with everyone's faces emerging from them and "singing" in unison.
- Brown Note: The viral spread of a picture of a sloth giving a thumbs-up causes anyone who sees it to experience a wave of euphoria and turn into a screaming zombie not twelve hours later, among other things.
- Cosmic Horror Reveal: The series starts as seemingly a down-to-earth Zombie Apocalypse tale about an internet meme that causes anyone who sees it to experience a hit of euphoria and a desperate urge to share it with the world. However, 12 hours after one is exposed to it, they start bleeding from the eyes and screaming uncontrollably. The "screamers" will attack anyone not in a similar state and continue their frenzied attempts to expose people to the meme, even after a global internet blackout. Further, once enough screamers gather in one place, their screams combine to create music that is the audio version of the meme, so even blind people are no longer immune. In the final chapter, the screamers go eerily silent and begin gathering in groups of millions in major cities. They start forming spires of human bodies taller than skyscrapers, their flesh melting and fusing as they do so. The artist who created the meme reveals that he was commanded to do so by telepathic voices in his head before killing himself. Even Aaron, the protagonist, who is color-blind and partially deaf and thus one of the few people completely immune to the meme, willingly fuses with the mass, as he'd rather fit in and join the rest of humanity than be left all alone. It's only on the last page that the reader finally sees what the point of this all is — hundreds of giant creatures appear from space to harvest the spires, with the heavy implication that this was the entire point of the human race's existence — to feed these creatures when the time came.
- Disability Immunity: Discussed in a humorous way at the beginning: Aaron's best friend Sarah says he's like one of the X-Men, since being colorblind makes him immune to the meme's effect. He's also deaf, and this makes him immune to the infected's screams as well.
- Downer Ending: The meme cannot be stopped. Its author has already destroyed all backups and kills himself before anyone can force him to reveal how to undo it. Almost everyone is dead, waiting for death, or fused together in horrible towers of flesh. Aaron managed to avoid the meme's effects but decides to voluntarily become a Screamer. And the Earth is about to get invaded by aliens.
- Driven to Suicide: Given that it takes 12 hours for a person who has seen the meme to turn into a Screamer, some of them decide to kill themselves rather than get turned. Aaron's boyfriend, who said his brothers turned into Screamers and killed his parents, jumps off of a building after revealing to Aaron that he happened to see the meme.
- Emergency Broadcast: The President of the US appears on TV to say that, in order to stop the meme's transmission, the internet will be shut down and all other broadcasts will follow suit, effective immediately. He starts to bleed from his eyes and scream just before the screen turns into static, since a few pages before he said that his daughters showed him the image.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Well not dead exactly, but close enough.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The civilization collapses in a mere three days.
- Handicapped Badass: Turning almost completely blind did not hinder Marcus, who even if retired is still a decorated soldier.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Dr. Crowne, Aaron's doctor, has become insane after being exposed to the meme and wants to operate on Aaron to make him feel the bliss that everyone else is feeling. He also keeps some Screamers locked in his lab including Aaron's parents in order to convert as many people as possible. Aaron frees the Screamers and they immediately turn on Dr. Crowne and tear him apart.
- Inescapable Horror: When the image becomes viral almost everyone feels forced to share it online, at that point mainstream media dub it "Good Times Sloth" and helps diffuse it even more, even to those who don't use the internet or smartphones. Then people become "Screamers" and start to kill everyone who's not affected by the meme like them. Then they start to mutate, stop being violent, and their screams turn into a "song" that manages to have the same effects as seeing the meme.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: "The Maker" the Mad Artist who created the meme seemingly with the help of aliens resembles a younger, psychotic Andy Warhol.
- No Ending: The final issue fades to black just when what seems to be an Eldritch Abomination enters Earth's atmosphere and is seemingly greeted by the spires of flesh that once were the world's population.
- No Name Given: "The Maker" goes unnamed and apparently removed himself all instances of his former name anywhere. Based on what he says to the protagonists, he's a famous artist and laments that they are too ignorant to recognize him. Since he made the meme and knows what its ultimate effects are, he most likely decided to get rid of his name because, when the world population gets united in a single Hive Mind, there won't be any use for names any longer.
- Shout-Out:
- Among Aaron's list of online friends at the beginning there are the names of the comic's authors, but also Jack Torrance and Mordecai Rigby.
- Dr. Crowne gets ripped apart by the Screamers in a panel very similar to Captain Rhodes' disembowelment from Day of the Dead (1985).
- Twofer Token Minority: Marcus Shaw is black and legally blind. Aaron Sumner is homosexual, colorblind, and almost deaf. This becomes a plot point because in the end Aaron, who survived for three days, decides that it's better to join the Hive Mind the Screamers have turned into, since he doesn't want to feel different and an outcast anymore.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: If this were a typical Zombie Apocalypse story, things might have worked out better for humanity. The heroes, most of whom are immune, quickly delineate the source of the infection (Good Times Sloth), shut down its means of spreading (mass media), and track down an individual who might be able to make a cure (The Maker). Unfortunately for them, the story is from a much bleaker genre and all their efforts are for naught. The infection finds new ways of spreading, their potential savior doesn't cooperate, and the immune protagonist voluntarily infects himself after giving up hope.
