By Jonathan Edwards

With a title like The Beef and a cover featuring the subtitles “tainted love” and “a biochemical romance,” I went into this first issue expecting a story along the lines of Image’s Plastic from last year. And, since Plastic was the best thing I read from Image last year, I was pretty stoked at the idea of a similarly nontraditional love story, this time utilizing an inverse metaphor and theme (that is to say, about meat rather than, well, plastic). Of course, that was a pretty big conclusion to jump to, so it’s not all that surprising that it turned out to be an inaccurate one as well. Yet, that by itself isn’t the most disappointing thing about The Beef #1. Instead, it’s the story’s utterly familiar setup and stark lack of any meaningful variation that turns this issue into one big missed opportunity.