The Juvenile trade paperback collects the five issues of Jesús Orellana’s miniseries from Image, which ran from April 2025 to December 2025.
As the name suggests, Juvenile is a very classic young adult (YA) story. Juvenile is set in a dystopian future after a suspicious terrorist attack leaves children infected with a disease which kills them when they reach adolescence. The series follows a group of children in a treatment center where adults medicate teenagers and eventually lobotomize them in the name of saving their lives. When a new inmate shows up with a spotty past and reveals a shocking secret about the Juvenile Virus, the inmates must band together to find their freedom.
There is a good deal of YA written in this vein already, a lot of it massively popular, but Orellana’s cartooning chops still make for a fun romp. His illustration style is reminiscent of Brandon Graham or Kim Jung Gi’s richly detailed, organic art, and for the most part this attention to detail makes each page very engaging. Occasionally, the coloring falls a bit flat, since much of the treatment center is painted in whites and grays, making characters who wear those colors fall into the background a bit.
The best scenes are set at night, when the teens are sneaking around the treatment center and the panels are washed in dark blues and greens. Orellana is able to capture in his art the tandem suspense and joy of being a teenager sneaking around in a way that very few prose writers of the genre have managed to capture. The entire book is also laid out in 1×4 rectangles, which gives Orellana’s art a lot of room to breathe.
Much of the YA genre relies heavily on teen archetypes: the bad boy, the shy girl, the jock, the sensitive boy, etc., and Juvenile certainly leans into this without becoming caricaturish. There are moments when Orellana’s character writing chops really shine through, especially as the teens gain better understanding of one another, but the fact that Juvenile is a miniseries hinders our ability to feel close to a large ensemble cast.
In the afterward for the trade paperback, Orellana talks about Juvenile’s setting being appealing to him because of its small scale. (The series is exclusively set in the treatment center.) While I appreciated the setting for a while, especially as it contributed to the intimate excitement of the teens’ secret discoveries, at a certain point the setting began to feel constrictive. Other YA classics in this vein such as Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember or Tony DiTerlizzi’s The Search For Wondla, which hinge on their characters escaping from a constraining world into a much vaster unknown one allow us a greater view into what happens after the escape, which I wished I could have gotten from Juvenile. It’s a mark of how fun Juvenile felt to read that I was frustrated by the open ending of the series.
After finishing I found myself furiously looking up whether Orellana would be writing more which is always a good sign. I was just beginning to feel really attached to the lives and futures of these characters and the mysteries of their world when the series ended. Orellana left me wanting more, which some might argue makes it a smashing success, but I hope we get a Juvenile 2 somewhere down the line.
Creative Team: Jesús Orellana (writer/artist)
Publisher: Image Comics
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