content: In some sense VAS picks up where Richard Powers's groundbreaking The Gold Bug Variations leaves off: assume that the structure of language is reflected in the double helix, and assume further that print technologies are an analog for body technologies, words and images and book materials made flesh and blood and bones. Now imagine a narrative orchestrated around characters whose symbolic proportions resonate with the latter two assumptions, and you have some idea of the staggering visual sweep and poetic beauty of VAS, perhaps the first graphic novel (term used advisedly) in which both "graphic" and "novel" are given their full due as contemporary art forms, thus reinventing the genre while re-novelizing the novel of ideas. VAS stitches personal reproductive drama to social-scientific controversy to illustrate the challenges facing our species, a species wedded to its incorporations. Author Tomasula and designer Farrell have set the bar very, very high.