Friday Feature - Nerdy Girl / Cecil Seaskull

Can you remember two weeks ago? I reviewed Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg's Plain Janes graphic novel series and we discovered that along with being a Young Adult author Cecil was also an indie rock performer sooooooo...this week's Friday Feature is Nerdy Girl / Cecil Seaskull an 1990s indie rock singer and her band from Montreal, Canada.

 

When I first heard Nerdy Girl I had to get the calculator out to work out how old Cecil was when she recorded with them, she has the sweetest most innocent voice. I was amazed that she was in her late twenties! And actually when you listen to the lyrics of Twist Her you realise that these are not sweet songs, they are about confused love, stealing boyfriends, drugs and self-loathing. Combined with her young voice her songs become wonderfully teenage (and I do mean that in a good way) full of hormones and hope and depression and uncertainty. Cecil describes her sound as 'twee' and it does indeed sound unmistakably 1990s indie like a less trippy Mazzy Star, The Cardigans, Dressy Bessy, Go Sailor etc. If I had to recommend an order of listening it would be listen to Cecil's band's album Twist Her before seeking out her solo effort Whoever. Twist Her has definitely aged better than Whoever. It is more accessible, more polished more varied and very easy to listen to. That is not to say that Whoever is not without merit, for instance I very much enjoyed listening to Sweet Girl.

 

 

Where will I have heard her before?

You're much more likely to have encountered Cecil in her guise of Cecil Castellucci, a very successful Young Adult author. You can read my review of her Plain Janes series here.

Featured Song: Anne Eliot

Where can I hear more?

Nerdy Girl released some 7" and 10" EPs but the only album that is easy to access these days is their 1997 album Twist Her via iTunes. Cecil Seaskull's 1998 album Whoever is also only available through iTunes.

What is her website?

http://castellucci.wordpress.com/

Next week: We'll return to the Minx Reviews

Minx Reviews: The Plain Janes and Janes in Love

So I was going to review a different Minx title this week but I was so distracted drawing my own graphic story (which I'll share with you at a later date) that I forgot to re-read it! D'oh! So to make up for it I'll review two other Minx graphic novels in one go: The Plain Janes and Janes in Love written by Cecil Castellucci and illustrated by Jim Rugg.

The Plain Janes is all about...uh...Jane, a popular girl who is caught in a terrorist explosion. Jane survives but afraid that next time she might not be so lucky her parents relocate from the city to the safe suburbs of Kent Waters. The explosion really gets Jane thinking and she realises she wants more in life than being popular. She redesigns herself and instead of sitting at the cool girl table on her first day of school she sits with the 'rejects', a group of girls (and one guy) who all happen to be called variations on the name Jane. Jane wants to channel her feelings from her bad experience into making the world a more beautiful place and together with the other Janes create art installations in the dead of night (think Banksy or Knit Bombing) however not everyone can see the art in P.L.A.I.N's (People Loving Art in Neighbourhoods) art and will do anything to stop them from defacing Kent Waters any further.

 

Janes in Love continues the activities of P.L.A.I.N with Jane realising the only way she can continue to make Kent Waters more beautiful is to make her art legal however whilst she's applying for an arts grant the other Janes are flaking out on her as the Leap Year Dance (their school's Valentine's Day ball) is coming!

 

The Janes books are some of the more positive books in the Minx series. You know that whatever the plot suggests things are going to turn out okay for Jane and her crew. This is great if you need a lift on a miserable day but not so good if you want some gritty realism. A more subtler positivity that the books contain is the concept of turning something ugly into something beautiful. Jane believes deeply in her cause - a project that will not only help her work through her trauma of the bombing but also change for the better the lives of everyone around her - and works at it doggedly no matter what fate throws at her. When you think of the more popular Young Adult heroines such as Bella Swan and Clary Fray such selflessness and dedication puts Jane head and shoulders above them as a positive young adult role model.

 

The other Janes are more stereotypical which is fine in the first book but a little lazy in the second. Each Jane is known as their thing eg Theatre Jane and Sporty Jane and that's pretty much as deep as they get. There is the odd twist to their stereotyping eg Sporty Jane though very unladylike is the first to bag herself a boy in Janes in Love but it's rare. Clever Jane's quirk is that her parents are two gay men which though unusual and refreshing isn't really about her, is it? Then there is James, the only gay in the village...er...I mean Buzz Aldrin High (best name for a school ever). We know he's gay because his face is drawn differently from all the other male characters and he only ever hangs out with girls. He is most definitely stereotyped by his sexuality which is sad as I know that wasn't the intention. I really wanted him to find some straight / gay male friends so that he could explore aspects of himself that he couldn't with a bunch of straight girls.

 

The most developed of the other Janes is Theatre Jane which is ironic as her speech patterns are the most unbelievable (she talks like a male Shakespearean actor). This development happens in Janes in Love where she goes to meet her crush (theatre actor Rhys) on the same day Jane goes to her arts grant pitch. Theatre Jane goes from being a stubborn drama queen to showing a gentler, more nervous and fragile side as well as displaying very endearing resilience.

 

Janes in Love definitely has the stronger narrative (The Plain Janes' overarching story is very basic - succeed at spreading art - leaving lots of space to explore Jane making friends, spreading art, understanding her feelings, getting an art crush on a guy in a coma and winning bad boy Grant) but the 'girls falling in love' part of it is much less original. Maybe it's because every slice of life Young Adult book aimed at female readers involves at least one obligatory romance or maybe it's because the other Janes don't really expand beyond their characters established in the first book that it feels unimaginative. I mean if you're going to do teen romance you really need to put a new spin on it. Theatre Jane's visit to Rhys does have that spin and there is a suggestion of a lesbian encounter but apart from that it's all pretty much paint by numbers stuff. Luckily art is not completely forgotten in the second book and Jane's attempt to continue P.L.A.I.N is enough to carry the book through (though you are never in any doubt about how the art grant will go). 

 

Apart from James not looking like anyone else in either of the books (this is particularly apparent in Janes in Love where his eyes are just dots) the art, as usual, is first class. Jim manages to combine bold lines with wispy shading. The characters (apart from James) have large eyes that really do act like the doors to their souls. I could honestly stare at main Jane's eyes all day. The characters and backgrounds, though not always 100% realistic have so much beauty an emotion to them. They feel like art which I suppose makes them perfect for books about the beauty of art.

You'll like The Plain Janes / Janes in Love if you like:
Rookie, Art School Confidential (and the art class scenes in the Ghost World movie), The Gilmore Girls, It's Kind of a Funny Story, The Perks of Being s Wallflower and knit bombing

Also by Jim Rugg:
Street Angel, Afrodisiac, One Model Nation, and The Guild.

Novels by Cecil Castellucci:
Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool, Beige, Rose Sees Red, Grandma's Gloves, First Day on Earth, The Year of Beasts and Odd Duck.

Cecil is also an indie rock musician releasing music as Nerdy Girl and Cecil Seaskull. Maybe I should do Friday Feature on her music. What do you think?

Friday Feature - Graphic Novels for Female Readers 2: Minx



Minx was an imprint of DC Comics for teenage girls but sadly only ran between 2007-2008. It was aimed at intelligent and creative young women who enjoyed manga and indie graphic novels but felt too intimidated to read more mainstream American graphic novels such as Batman or Wonder Woman. Unfortunately due to factors such as mainstream booksellers placing Minx graphic novels with the 'boys comics', manga readers often shunning manga-style comics and the majority of Minx's creators being male the whole 'alternative graphic novels for young women' idea was considered not worth the trouble and Minx was cancelled.

To begin with each Minx graphic novel was a one-shot (single issue comic) though sequels were planned. The protagonists were always female (high school - college age) with their stories often being slice of life (though some had fantasy elements) sometimes featuring romance and always featuring personal growth. Though aimed at teenage girls the stories were never sugarcoated with the aforementioned life lessons often coming the hard way.

Due to the desire to attract readers of manga and indie graphic novels each book was A5 in size with a colour cover and greyscale pages. At the back of each book were samples of other Minx titles and three pages of blank panels to draw your own comic.

The Minx graphic novels were:

• The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg - the artistic exploits of a group of high school misfits all called Jane.
• Re-Gifters by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel - a young martial artist learns that there is much more emotion involved in the art of giving than just passing an object from one person to another.
• Clubbing by Andi Watson and Josh Howard - a city goth discovers a sleepy village's creepy secret.
• Good as Lily by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm - a girl encounters three different versions of herself.
• Confessions of a Blabbermouth by Mike Carey, Louise Carey and Aaron Alexovich - a young blogger learns you shouldn't write up every thought that pops into your head unedited.
• Kimmie66 by Aaron Alexovich - a 23rd century girl investigates the suicide of a friend she has only met on the internet. 
• Burnout by Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda - a young girl literally plays with fire when she starts dating a new boy.
• Water Baby by Ross Campbell - a surfer girl who lost her leg goes on an ill-fated road trip.
• The New York Four by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly - explores both the glamour and loneliness of moving to the famous city that is New York
• Emiko Superstar by Mariko Tamaki and Steve Rolston - a sheepish girl creates a new persona for herself during the summer holidays as a performance artist but learns glamour is subjective.
• Token by Alisa Kwitney and Joelle Jones - when a single father starts to date his secretary his already awkward daughter vents her feelings of rejection and frustration by taking shoplifting lessons from a handsome stranger.

Unfortunately all the graphic novels only had single print runs and you probably won't be able to get them in a book or comic book shop anymore (I pretty much looted Forbidden Planet London...sorry guys) however you can still get them for reasonable prices from places like the Amazon Market Place and eBay.

I plan on reviewing each of the titles separately but if I had to pick one favourite it would be Emiko Superstar which features an extremely shy Japanese-American girl getting drawn to the surface glamour of an underground alternative performance art scene. Desperate to be cool for a summer she finds a way to join in but realises all that glitters isn't gold and that to maintain her fame she will have to compromise her morals...and I will leave the rest of that for its review!

I think it's a terrible shame that Minx didn't succeed. The reason more young women (or females in general) don't read graphic novels is because they don't feel many are aimed at them. This in turn creates a feeling that if a female IS interested in graphic novels she is being fake and doing it because that is what is cool with menfolk (which of course well all know is a load of guff). I sincerely hope that at some point DC does try Minx again...and when they do I want to be there writing for them.

Next week: We explore another of Ross Campbell's works further as the last (for now) of my graphic novels for female readers series!