Resistance is the first graphic novel by Queen of crime Val McDermid. In a case of life imitating art, Resistance was radio play commissioned by Welcome in 2017. Val McDermid then teamed up with graphic illustrator Kathryn Briggs. It is a science fiction/pandemic themed novel about a bacterial pandemic caused by bacteria that proves resistant to antibiotics.
Zoe, a freelance journalist, attends an outdoor music festival. Her close friends have a very popular sausage stall there. People start getting sick and as they disperse over the UK and Europe the infection rapidly spreads worldwide. Zoe’s friends are blamed, and she sets out to find out what happened and to help them clear their name However the situation spirals out of control. Like Station Eleven, there’s a doomsday feel to this novel, which made me reflect on how close to the brink we came and what could have happened.
I enjoyed this – the layout was very clever in the way it flowed across the pages. I loved the collage effects and the mixing of mediaeval/Black Death imagery in the backgrounds. So much to look at. I look forward to more collaborations by this talented duo.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Amazing story and excellent art-work to support it.

**Disclaimer: I received a free early access copy of Resistance: A Graphic Novel by Val McDermid through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for this opportunity.

Resistance: A Graphic Novel by Val McDermid is a science fiction/horror graphic novel about the possibility of a bacterial pandemic where the bacteria is resistant to antibiotics.  The graphic novel published on May 20th, 2021.  I rated it four stars on Goodreads.


Here's the summary from Goodreads:

A gritty, dark tale of infectious disease gone wrong - the timely graphic novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Val McDermid
It's the summer solstice weekend, and 150,000 people descend on a farm in the northeast of England for an open-air music festival. At first, a spot of rain seems to be the only thing dampening the fun - until a mystery bug appears. Before long, the illness is spreading at an electrifying speed and seems resistant to all antibiotics. Can journalist Zoe Meadows track the outbreak to its source, and will a cure be found before the disease becomes a pandemic?
A heart-racing thriller, Resistance imagines a nightmare pandemic that seems only too credible in the wake of COVID-19. Number one bestseller and queen of crime Val McDermid has teamed up with illustrator Kathryn Briggs to create a masterful graphic novel.

I really enjoyed this book, however, if you're not interested in reading about a pandemic after living through one, I would highly recommend that you don't check this particular book out.  It was very well written, but it could be a sensitive topic for a lot of people, and I just want you to be aware of that before hand.  It was a bit of a rough read.

This was a well structured story.  I liked how we saw things from the main character's Zoe's perspective.  However, I also liked that we got snippets here and there from different characters' views.  We got to see from scientists, and victims of the disease.  It was really well done in how certain details were revealed.  I felt that the main characters we encountered were well developed.  There were some more one dimensional characters, but they were needed to be that way.  You can't have everyone be completely well developed.  There just isn't time for that.

The art was nice.  It felt gritty in a way that really suited the story.  I liked all the little details that were layered into the backgrounds.  There was some really good imagery and all the characters felt unique and distinctive.  It was easy to tell who was who and who was going on.

There was a good pacing throughout.  It kept me gripped and I needed to know what was going to happen and how things were going to play out.  I was metaphorically on the edge of my seat because I just had to know the ending.  I ended up reading this in one sitting.

Overall, it was a really well done book and you should check it out if you don't mind reading about pandemics.

This is my first graphic novel, so maybe I'm not the right audience for this BUT I found the artwork underwhelming and a little depressing which destroyed my enjoyment of the story and made it a slog.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC copy.

I was keenly anticipating this book. I found the narrative topical and timely (prophetic, in fact, considering it was written in 2017), and the artwork was stark and beautiful.

Unfortunately, my version of the Kindle doesn't handle graphics well, and I had pages of drawing with blank thought balloons, followed by pages of undifferentiated text. I plowed my way through it, but think how much more I would enjoy a collated version! Must hold out for a hard copy.

Thanks to NetGalley for facilitating an advance readers copy.

Originally written as a radio drama on the BBC, this pandemic story is now being released in graphic novel format.

The illness is found to originate from a food van at an music festival in England. People believe it to be food poisoning until lesions start appearing on their skin and death comes quickly. As scientists begin to study the illness, and the contagion slips out of their grasp as it mutates too fast for the antibiotics.

The story itself is good, but three things kept me from truly appreciating it. First is the presentation… So many talking heads with not much action. Second is the bland black and white artwork. I think a lot could have been done symbolically with the correct color palette. And finally, timing. The audio-drama was released in ‘17 and this book (thinking about publishing schedules) was obviously in the works for awhile, but why release it now in the middle of Covid?

While well-researched and plotted, the graphic novel ultimately suffered from several issues that don’t allow it to be fully appreciated.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic, and the creators for an advanced copy for review.

In collaboration with illustrator Kathryn Briggs, the Scottish Queen of Crime Val McDermid launches into a new medium with Resistance - the graphic novel.
In this bleak dystopian thriller, we follow journalist Zoe Beck, as she follows the story of a fast-spreading pandemic, from "patient zero", through devastating personal loss, towards a new beginning.
Zoe attends the Summer Solstice music festival in rural Northumberland in her professional guise, hoping to sell several interviews she conducts with musical acts. The festival is beset by constant rain and Zoe shelters in the food van of her friends Sam and Lisa Shore - "Sam's Sausage Sandwiches" - between interviews. Before long, several performers and many patrons begin to feel the effects of a gastro bug, a development festival organisers are keen to play down.
Zoe's relieved to return home to Newcastle and to her partner and their two sons. But before long, a headline performer from the festival is reported as having died from a mystery illness, and many who had been in attendance begin to fall seriously ill, even those who had initially appeared to have recovered from the initial gastro infection.
As the mystery disease spreads throughout the UK and the world, Zoe tries desperately to get to the truth of what is happening. Authorities have zeroed in on Sam's Sausages as the initial source of the pathogen, and her friends are forced into hiding to avoid the community backlash. Zoe identifies suspect practices at the farm which supplied Sam with his supposedly "organic" meat. She also makes contact with research scientist Dr. Aasmah Siddiqui, from whom she begins to learn the awful truth about the elusive and antibiotic-resistant Erysipelas pathogen - colloquially known as "The Sips".
In these current times, Resistance was a disquieting read. Many of the developments are gut-wrenching on a personal scale, and horrifying at a global or species level. McDermid explores many pertinent issues - the politicisation of threats to population health and safety, the impacts of commercial motives undermining ethics and consideration of the greater good in both the pharmaceutical and agriculture-food production industries, and the inability of our under-resourced healthcare systems to deal with a sudden and fast-moving pandemic. She also considers the human and community-level responses that might occur when subjected to threats of this kind.
Kathryn Briggs's comic-style illustrations are fitting to the narrative and evocative of the horror of the situation. I was intrigued by her incorporation of many recognisable motifs, including illuminated manuscript, religious iconography, ancient Greek art and even public service letterheads into her illustrations. The dynamic combination of narrative and illustration made for a compelling read.
Readers around the world will bring to this edition of Resistance their own experience of living during a pandemic, which is not something the author can have anticipated when she wrote the original narrative. In the course of preparing for this review, I listened to Resistance in its original form - a radio play released by Val McDermid in 2017, starring the fabulous Gina McKee in the lead role as Zoe. While there are some changes to character names and genders, and additional dialogue has been added in places, this new graphic novel release closely resembles its predecessor. It's remarkably prescient of McDermid to have accurately fictionalised several issues that have arisen during the current Covid-19 pandemic almost three years in advance.
Resistance isn't an easy read, with many confronting scenes and themes, and may be especially triggering for those who have suffered personal losses due to Covid-19. However, I feel that it's a characteristically well-researched and written piece by one of my favourite writers. I'd recommend it to all lovers of dramatic contemporary fiction, including those who, like myself, haven't yet ventured far into the emerging format of graphic novels.
My thanks to the author, Val McDermid, illustrator Kathryn Briggs, publisher Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Monthly Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

The prospect of one of the UK's greatest crime writers turning her hand to a graphic novel is pretty exciting, and Resistance does not disappoint.

Zoe is a journalist based in Newcastle who is assigned to cover a major music festival. People at the festival start to get sick, seemingly from food poisoning. When a headline act dies, fingers start to be pointed at Zoe's friend Sam, a sausage seller. But things become a lot more concerning when the illness spreads to people who were not even at the festival. Soon it becomes clear that a major health emergency is in progress.

McDermid's tale of an illness crossing from animals to humans and wreaking global havoc has obvious parallels with the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, although the dystopia that she portrays is far worse than anything being experienced now. Kathryn Briggs' black and white artwork is striking, and she uses backgrounds cleverly to draw links between what is being experience and the great plagues of history, such as the Black Death. This is a gripping read, which has some cogent points to make about how fragile our civilisation actually is, and how unprepared we are for some circumstances that COVID-19 has shown are far from impossible.

“with Northumberland readying itself for the open–air event of the season. The programme ranged from death metal to Mozart micro–opera. But it wasn’t all fun and games. We had no idea at the time, but this was where the end began”

My thanks to Grove Atlantic/Black Cat for a digital review copy via NetGalley of ‘Resistance’ written by Val McDermid and illustrated by Kathryn Briggs in exchange for an honest review.

Journalist Zoe Beck has taken a break from investigative reporting to spend more time with her family. She attends Solstice, a Northumberland music festival, where she will be busy interviewing musicians. Her friends Sam and Lisa are the proprietors of Sam’s Sausage Sandwiches in Newcastle. They also are at Solstice with a very popular street food truck stall.

Then, some of the food truck’s customers begin to fall ill. Could it be food poisoning? After the festival attendees return home and more people fall ill, then some die. The disease spreads fast and resists all efforts to contain or cure it.

The graphic novel follows Zoe’s quest for the truth about the source of the disease as well as the work of Dr. Aasmah Siddiqui from the Life Sciences Centre, who is seeking answers to this bacterial disease that has developed a resistance to antibiotics. In other panels Sam and Lisa’s post festival experiences are explored as well as the response of Government officials.

This graphic novel is an adaptation of Val McDermid’s radio drama of the same name written for BBC Radio 4 Dangerous Visions series in March 2017. Its focus was upon the concerns of the scientific community about the rise of antibiotic resistance.

Kathryn Briggs’ art is simple and I felt that it effectively illustrated this harrowing story. I especially liked the flourishes that she used in some panels such as referencing medieval woodcuts and stained glass.

I was intrigued about the radio drama and after my initial read of the graphic novel I sought it out. I then listened to each of the three episodes while rereading the relevant parts of the graphic novel. This combination provided a very complete audiovisual experience.

Overall, this was very chilling reading, especially during a global pandemic caused by a rapidly mutating virus. Still, the message of ‘Resistance’ about the threat posed by the overuse of antibiotics is an important one.

I certainly feel that this graphic novel would also be of interest to educators and librarians.

Resistance is a graphic novel about a global pandemic that begins with some contaminated meat at a music festival and rapidly spreads around the world, told from the perspective of investigative journalist Zoe Beck. Zoe quickly uncovers the problem and will do anything to try to help, but her thoughts fall on deaf ears as the world's governments and civilisations descend into chaos.

The illustrations of this book were beautifully done and it was a really easy plot to follow, but I unfortunately don't think this book is for me. If I had read it before 2020, I may have felt differently, but based on the current pandemic, it read more like an upsetting play-by-play of a global pandemic that goes too far than a thriller, as the plot didn't have a lot of exciting moments or twists and instead felt more like a depressing critique. Zoe was an interesting character to read about, but I found myself stopping reading frequently as the story was not providing the level of escapism that I would hope for from a graphic novel.

Overall I think it's a well-written book, but it was sadly too close to reality over the past year and too openly critical of society and the government to be an enjoyable read for me right now.

Don't turn away because this is about a pandemic- but do yourself a favor and get it in hard copy because it doesn't come off as effectively as it should in ebook format. McDermid has envisioned a nightmare which starts with bad food at a music festival and then spreads across the world, Zoe, a journalist, tracks the cause and effect with advice from Dr. Siddiqui, a researcher who provides her with info not only about bacteria but also about the effects of dosing our feed animals with antibiotics. It's a cautionary tale to be sure. I'm a fan of McDermid for her layered and nuanced crime novels. This isn't one of those but it is, nonetheless, interesting. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This was a hard read for me personally. Im used to colorful and not so text heavy graphic novels, where I can enjoy the graphic style, but sadly I could not enjoy this one, because the illustrations are pencil drawings and although I appreciate the effort, its just not enjoyable for me. And it was just too much text, and I felt the story a bit confusing.

Wow is all I can say about this at the moment. It is eerily similar to the current world situation and in particular some countries who are battling the COVID virus significantly more than other countries.
I couldn’t stop reading this and even though it was a graphic novel it still brought home the tenuous thread that the population of the world really do live with. Journalist Zoe was there at ground zero when the virus first appeared and her mate Sam was blamed for spreading the virus. Zoe is searching for answers and knows that Sam was not directly to blame for the contamination but she comes up empty when the pig farm owner refuses to speak to her and kicks her off the farm. The government and big pharma were not interested in looking for a cure initially and when they were it was too late.
Although too short to get really involved with the characters there was enough in the story to give the reader pause to think about what they would do if this was to actually happen in the world.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had listened to the radio play of this story, as an audiobook. I loved it, and I was interested to see how it translated into a book format, or in this case a graphic novel.

Graphic novels are not my genre of choice, and those I have read tend to have more colourful illustrations, whereas in this book, they’re all black, and quite harsh. I think that’s the point though, this is a harsh story.

In light of Covid-19, this is more than a little topical, and for many maybe too close for them to read right now. I am in Australia, so we haven’t been affected as badly as so many countries across the globe, so I didn’t have an issue with that. I think this could make a powerful text to study in high school, the appeal of a graphic novel, and a powerful story to talk about.

Because this was written as a radio play, I think it works very well as a graphic novel, it’s easy to follow the storyline and dialogues because we can see who is speaking.

Considering the rage the COVID-19 pandemic has been since last year, many authors seem to have been moving towards telling their version of an epidemic story, however that was not something I would expected from the Queen of Crime thrillers Val McDermid, probably the only reason I got interested in requesting for this ARC from Netgalley. Though I have personally kept away from reading tales that are quite close to real life in order to not further damage my psyche, I couldn't help but get immersed in this tale which actually does hit quite close to how governments and people reacted over the past year. Sure, for avid comic book readers like myself, especially who are more into action adventure genre, may find the art from Kathryn Briggs a little difficult to get into at first, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying how the tale, characters, and the illustrations merged into each other making this one a truly fun yet horrifying read.

Wow, I’m glad I read this book after I was fully vaccinated! A very timely graphic novel about a journalist in northern England covering a music festival where attendees start falling ill from what appears to be food poisoning, but turns out to be much worse. As the sick return home, the illness spreads, and before long becomes a worldwide pandemic that ravages the planet. I wasn’t sure about this book when I first started, but the story quickly gained momentum and I found I couldn’t put it down. The rough style of the graphics were well suited for a world where the luxuries of life no longer existed. I wish I knew what happens next.

This book had a really cool plot but unfortunately it got lost in the art. The graphite drawing made the story really hard to follow in places. Things got very muddy and I had a hard time telling characters apart. I definitely saw the appeal of that sort of art style with a dark and gut wrenching like this one but unfortunately it just didn't work in this case.

This may not have been the best book to read in constant time but I honestly loved it. The perfect combination of Val McDermid's gripping storytelling and the edgy illustrating talent of Kathryn Briggs. I read this in one sitting and could not stop turning the page! The art style was unique and added an extra layer to the story which kept me guessing and thinking. I really enjoyed this and can't wait to see more of this from this dynamic duo!

A truly phenomenal graphic novel. As an admittedly rather morbid individual, I think this has come out at an appropriate time. I've always been interested in disease-cause apocalypses and the destruction of humanity, and this fits right into the genre. While I can understand this being too soon or too close to home for some people, I think it works. COVID-19 has undoubtedly been a horrible catastrophe made worse by government reluctance, humanity's selfishness, and political lines. From my very privileged position, this served as a reminder for me for how much worse the pandemic could have been. It is also important to note that this story was originally a BBC radio broadcast in 2017, so the COVID-19 pandemic wasn't exploited for narrative value here. Now onto the story!

Resistance follows journalist Zoe as she tries to uncover the source behind a sickness, later called the Sips, that breaks out at an open-air music festival in Northumberland. At first, doctor's think it's a virus but it is eventually revealed that it is a particularly violent bacteria exacerbated by the inhumane living conditions of animals and humanity's over-dependency on antibiotics. The graphic novel follows the Sips from epidemic to pandemic to wipe out.

While others have rightfully said that this is a wordy graphic novel, I think it works for the context. Additionally, the art is what elevates this from a great story to something truly phenomenal. Artist Kathryn Briggs uses what initially appears to be an unusual style for a graphic novel that eventually develops into, in my opinion, a masterpiece. The entire story is black-and-white, making the images as dark as the text.

My only complaint is actually that I wanted this to be longer. While it is a great length and story on its own, I feel that there were aspects of the disease and its effect on humanity that could have been explored more. We jumped around a lot (because that is truly what worked best for the story in this context), but there were some gaps that could have been filled. I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who really enjoyed the story and illustrations and didn't want it to end.

Either way, this is a graphic novel I hope to purchase to re-read multiple times.

Originally a 2017 radio play, Resistance is the debut graphic novel from ‘Queen of Crime’ Val McDermid, with striking illustrations by Kathryn Briggs. The jollity of a festival in north-east England quickly turns to panic, as attendees and performers begin to display strange symptoms, with terminal consequences. Local firebrand journalist Zoe is determined to find the source, becoming embroiled in government cover-ups and conspiracies along the way.

Is the world ready for a story about a pandemic? I would imagine Resistance is probably not appropriate for those who lost people to COVID-19. It is a harrowing, engaging story, and oddly prescient given the source material is at least four years old. There are hints of other dystopian novels, such as Parable of the Sower, and I Am Legend.

I found the human aspects of the story more engaging than the extended sections on bureaucracy. Zoe is a strong, instantly-likable character. As a reader, I was completely invested in her search for truth, and her tenacity.

Was Resistance a good choice for a graphic novel adaptation? It seems an odd choice to jump from the audio-only world of a radio play to a heavily visual medium. In my opinion, while Briggs’ illustrations are wonderful, and often conveyed in a very interesting way, Resistance may be a little too dialogue-heavy to fully succeed as a graphic novel. I think there is far too much focus on the words, and not how the words and images have to complement each other to create a successful graphic novel.

The conversation on the so-called “legitimacy” of the graphic novel as a form of literature still rumbles on. Surely, Nick Drnaso’s 2018 nomination for the Booker Prize for his timely and triumphant work, Sabrina, should have ended that argument. Yet, here we are. It would be great to think that Val McDermid’s already-established fanbase will use Resistance as a gateway to other illustrated works. Time will tell.