Anthem is the story of Equality 7-2521, who rebels against his dreary post-industrial Luddite society, and Liberty 5-3000, who tags along to make goo-goo eyes at him. As delineated by Staton it’s like watching an unfolding romance between Teenage Thor and Malibu Barbie. The story means to show how someone from a society where individuality is so thoroughly crushed that the world “I” is unknown. Unfortunately, Santino found the first part of the book in which the reader is introduced to this society too hard to adapt to comics, so he leaves it out completely. Instead of a society where thinking for yourself is unthinkable we are presented with a society where the people use “we” as a first person pronoun. In fact, from first to last, Equality 7-2521, or Eek as his friends no doubt called him, is so self-obsessed as to be practically solipsistic.
