Support / Pre-order your copy of The Strumpet volume 3 featuring me!

If you do and you are able to attend the London launch party in November I'll sign your copy and give you a big thank you hug! If you come dressed as Edward Nygma I'll even give you a thank you kiss ;) ;)

Here is a sneaky preview of my featured short comic Pest!

Minx Reviews: Confessions of a Blabbermouth

Hi guys - sorry for the silence! I've been preparing for a milestone in my career: having my first ever short graphic story published! So in honour of that I present to you my next Minx Review, the graphic story Confessions of a Blabbermouth written by Mike Carey and his daughter Louise Carey and illustrated by Aaron Alexovich.

 

Confessions of a Blabbermouth is about teen blogger Tasha whose mother moves in her new boyfriend, Jed, and his boring daughter Chloe. Jed is a writer, something Chloe also aspires to be which severely puts Tasha's nose out of joint when Chloe applies for the same job as Tasha on the school paper. Tasha takes to her blog to air her grievances about Chloe, even if what she says isn't true, causing all sorts of mayhem however from the flames of animosity friendship might still bloom.

 

I think the thing that stands out most about Blabbermouth is Jed. He most definitely can be added to the Minx douchebag list. He starts the story a minor douchebag and finishes, not redeemed but as a super douchebag (only enhanced by Aaron's ability to make him look like a crazy man)! As someone who doesn't really get on with their mother's partner I find it strangely satisfying though I can also see how it might feel weird. We are forever being sold realistic stories where the step-parent is miss-portrayed as the villain and that it is actually the hero(ine)'s grudge where the problem lies (compared to fairy tales where the step-parent is always evil). It's kind of nice to know that sometimes the problem IS with the grownup and that the teenage protagonist isn't just being hysterical! Jed, however, is a bit of a super villain in a what is supposed to be a realistic story. He is a character designed purely to be disliked and I think if you cannot empathise with someone who doesn't get on with a step-parent you will find him too one dimensional. Jed being a nogoodnik whilst Tasha and Chloe cement a relationship does cause for a strange ending. It makes you wonder how their future will be able to continue when surely if Jed is removed Chloe will also have to make an exit.

 

The second most obvious thing is that ever present lesson: be careful what you say in the Internet! Back when I was Tasha's age I had a livejournal where I wrote every little thing that popped into my head. I shudder just to think about it now! But that's how the Internet was back then, you were in your personal little space not realising the whole of the world could read it if they so chose. Of course the Internet's a little different now, blogs are usually themed and feature informative articles such as this one (hehe), all grievances are saved for Facebook and instant messengers and though I steer away from both I'm pretty certain all it takes for an unwise word to go nuclear is for one not so friendly friend to re-share it.

 

Teenage girls are always going to gossip. It's a fact. And things will always be said as fact that are actually pure feeling and opinion. This is one of the book's best lessons for both Tasha and Chloe - learning to actually get to know a person before judging them - but to be fair that's one of the hardest lessons we all need to learn! In a sense Tasha is lucky that she unites with Chloe over a common cause. If that had not existed and Chloe had been completely innocent Tasha would have come across as a complete bitch. I most definitely don't recommend bitching about someone you see as a threat as a way of becoming best buddies!

 

The art is by kimmie66 artist and writer Aaron Alexovich and is much more realistic (for him) so as to suit the realistic setting. It definitely feels like a good access point for his art as the characters contain his trademark level of expression without appearing too stylised. Tasha is hyperactive, Chloe always seems to be carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders and Jed is terrifying! It's also very curious to see a British secondary school through the eyes of an American artist. I especially loved how he managed to express various students through how they wore their ties.

 

Unlike the other Minx titles Blabbermouth is the one most purely enjoyable by teenage girls only thanks to it being half-written by one such creature! If you have never experienced the highs and lows and emotional rushes of being a teenage girl you just won't get it. Characters over-react, the go into moods for no reason, do completely unreasoned things and see other characters either as purely good or purely bad...which is how it is as a teenage girl. It won't make for the best reading experience if you are looking for some classic Mike Carey but if you're a girl and you just want someone to empathise with then you could do much worse than read Confessions of a Blabbermouth.

You'll like Confessions of a Blabbermouth if you like:
Re-Gifters, Gossip Girl, Mean Girls, The Parent Trap, Step Brothers, trashy talk shows and a bit of cheeky gossip blogging.

You'll like Confessions of a Blabbermouth if you don't like:
Your step-dad.

Selected graphic novels also by Mike Carey:
Lucifer, The Sandman Presents: Petrefax and The Furies, various Hellblazer volumes, Batman: Gotham Knights #37: "Fear is the Key", Detective Comics #801-804: "The Barker: When You're Strange", My Faith in Frankie, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, various Crossing Midnight volumes, God Save the Queen, Faker #1-6, Re-Gifters, The Unwritten, Ultimate Elektra: Devil's Due #1-5, Spellbinders #1-6, various Fantastic Four volumes, various X-Men volumes, Ultimate Vision #1-5, Ender's Shadow, The Torch #1-8, Thor: Wolves of the North, Sigil #1-4, Red Sonja #0-6, Vampirella: Revelations, Wetworks: Worldstorm, Voodoo Child and The Stranded #1-5.

Novels also by Mike Carey:
The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, Dead Men's Boots, Thicker Than Water, The Naming of the Beasts and The Steel Seraglio (co-written with Linda Carey and Louise Carey).

Also by Aaron Alexovich:Eldritch!, Serenity Rose and kimmie66.

Taking that ride to Nowhere

Every time I go on holiday to Folkestone I ride the RH&DR light railway from the beginning of the line at Hythe to the end of the line Dungeness and back again via a model train museum at New Romney. It's such a wonderful experience because the trains are very small versions of old fashioned steam and diesel trains such as the train featured in Rail. There are also lots of excitable children (which is always lovely to see) and the end destination, Dungeness is like another planet!

Dungeness is basically one gigantic shingle beach where next to nothing can grow. Due to this the power station was built however they needed places to house the workers so little wooden shacks were built. Despite being right next to a power station these shacks are powered by gas canisters as the area is so isolated. Some of the shacks now have been sold off and are galleries.

I like visiting Dungeness as it is so beautiful but also so creepy. You can stand next to the power station looking at the vast expanse of nothing and hear this strange, disembodied, echoing voice floating from the speaker system of the mysterious power station.

If you would also like to visit Dungeness I definitely recommend going via the RH&DR (Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway). It's always a fun ride and some days are eve themed rides such as at Christmas, Halloween and the local festival Day of Syn.

Once at Dungeness you can either eat a picnic on the beach, have a cream tea at the railway café or try some regional food at Dungeness' only pub, The Britannia Inn. There are also cafes / restaurants at Hythe and New Romney.

Friday Feature - Margret Helgadottir

This Friday is another guest post by an author, this time Margret Helgadottir. It is about writing her character Iselin from her short story Shadow, self-harm and The Moomins and is part of the Impossible Spaces Blog Tour (if you click on the button you can read all the other posts in the tour - I shall be contributing two guest posts very soon too, though I'll tell you more about those as they happen).

Margret is an Icelandic-Norwegian writer who has travelled all over the world and has just started to write fiction in English. She mainly writes speculative fiction and is very much inspired by Nordic culture, climate and folklore. Shadow is about a young woman called Islelin who thanks to both nature and nurture has always felt isolated and different.When she meets freedom fighter of sorts, Berge, she is flung into an alternate, desolate world where lizard creatures, not humans, are the apex predators but could it be that in this hopeless future is where her salvation lies?

Margret with her copy of Impossible Spaces, one of the many publications she has stories printed in.

"I’ve had the image of Iselin in my head for a long time. Iselin is an old Norwegian female name that means dream or vision. Originally I wanted it to be more a chaotic and confusing horror story that travelled through visions and dimensions, with Iselin as the key factor. Then, as I started to write, a different narrative wanted to be told. This often happens in my writing. I’ve started to spend less time on the planning of my stories, because they often seem to have a life on their own. You asked me to take pictures of my notes. For this story I only had five small sentences, in Norwegian, and the only thing that I used was that Iselin entered an elevator on her way home late one night.

 

 

I’ve had the image of a scarred young woman who hides from the world, too scared to pop her head up, for a long time, and I’ve also played with ideas of how an outsider would react if suddenly almost all the people were gone and the person had no society to avoid. Would this encourage the person to take up more space in the world, and no longer fear being visible? You know, like plants do when you give them a larger pot and more earth. Their roots will stretch and they will grow larger and blossom. But if they’re forced to stay in the same tiny pot forever, they will remain the same size until they die, and maybe never blossom fully.

 

In hindsight, I see that the story about Iselin is a sad story about self-preservation. Iselin is a young woman scarred mentally and physically by her childhood. She’s been raised to not be a burden to her parents and has always managed on her own. As an adult, she’s been sucked into a vicious spiral: she shuns contact with people and they in return avoid her, leading to her feeling even more isolated and misunderstood so that she redoubles her efforts to stay away from people, and so on. Getting stuck in such a self-reinforcing spiral is much easier than people think.

Street art by C215 in Oslo that inspired Margret.

Iselin learned to keep all her emotions on the inside early on, so she wouldn’t provoke or disturb her parents. This has stuck with her. The emotions are locked up inside her and someone seems to have thrown the key far away. She suffers, but she doesn’t know how to deal with it. She tries to ease her pain with substitutes, like many people do when life gets unbearable or they want to escape their heavy thoughts. However, she does not resort to starving herself, drinking large quantities of alcohol, losing herself in drug-induced highs, or throwing herself from cliffs. No, Iselin works until she drops, and when that doesn’t help, she cuts herself with razor blades. Numb and exhausted, she drags herself from day to day, hoping no one will notice her, yet secretly longing to be seen.

 

The world sees only a stone face. Iselin has not only become a shadow of herself, she’s also a shadow in the world. She is like the shy, scared little girl in Finnish author Tove Jansson’s story The Invisible Child, from her book Tales from Moominvalley (1962). Because an adult made sarcastic comments about her, this girl became totally invisible. Under the kind care of the Moomin family, she became secure enough to act spontaneously on her emotions and this led to her gradually becoming visible again. The story about Iselin spins around the same ideas of invisibility. The guerrilla soldier Berge is Iselin’s tolerant, accepting and generous Moomin family. Berge is an old Norwegian name that means “to save”.

Ninny and Moomin play hide and seek in the 1990 Moomin animated series.

But Berge has his own scars and is in many ways a shadow too. Rachel, you pointed out that the idea of fate is very strong in the story. You said that when Berge rubs the glove he wears to hide his scales over Iselin’s scars, it feels as if they were meant to save each other from themselves. Thanks for this. You’re right. Berge and Iselin are both miserable and lonely lost souls who live in the shadows of their own worlds. It’s only when they follow their instincts—Berge when he goes to the office building, Iselin when she chooses to follow Berge—that they find the solution. Shadow is all about Iselin and Berge helping each other to come out of the shadows, but on a macro level, the story is about something else: lost souls and a mysterious helping hand from another dimension that responds to their unvoiced cries for help. At least I hope it became such a story. I’ll leave it to the readers to decide whether I have succeeded in this or not.

Street art in Oslo by AliCe Pasquini

So, Shadow evolved from an idea for a horror story to a tale about hope, about how it can be possible to spot the light at the end of the tunnel, regardless of how hopeless the situation is, regardless of how lost you feel. Follow your instincts; follow the good guys; be brave enough to step out of the shadows. There are many kind-hearted lost souls walking the streets, scarred from their own battles, who’d like to meet you."

Send Margret your love via her blog http://margrethelgadottir.wordpress.com and also on twitter @MaHelgad.

Also if you are a goodreads user / reviewer you can win a copy of Impossible Spaces here!

Garoons!

Ahh! Double post! But I totally have to do this one before I go to the coast on Friday :D

A month or so ago Snow from Garoons held a giveaway. I'd never entered a blog giveaway before so didn't expect to win but I did! Yay! Here are the lovely things she sent to me:

 

 

When I return home I will take better pictures of the lovely necklace that she made (wow skill) and those wonderful socks (gosh I love socks).

 

Please visit Snow and send her lots of love from me <3

Daydream/Wetdream/Nightmare

Animation + Saint Motel = Awesome!

 

 

Minx Review: Re-Gifters

This week's Minx Review is dedicated to my friend Len. I trawled the whole of London to find a copy of Re-Gifters for her and it got 'lost' in the post (being a parcel I had weighed at the post office that means someone stole it grrrr). I know a review isn't the same but perhaps we can live vicariously through it. Re-Gifters is written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel.

 

Re-Gifters is about Korean-American hapkido competitor Dixie. She blows her $200 entry fee for a big championship on a birthday present for fellow martial artist and crush Adam only to discover that not only is he disinterested in her present but also her! Completely off her game, Dixie must now fight the street rounds to get the chance to re-qualify for the championship where she takes on tough guy Dillinger. Re-Gifters is also the story of the warrior statue Dixie buys for Adam and its journey around LA.

 

Re-Gifters is the most accessible Minx comic if you're a guy: it features sport, tough guys, girls who act like tough guys and eye candy Megan. That is not to say it's not also entertaining for young women, in fact it is perfect for young women who are bored of the weak, bland, overly-girly lead characters that often appear in young adult media: Dixie and her very charming best friend Avril are tough-talking city girls who are more than capable of standing up for themselves (though the male characters do spend a lot of time talking down to them). Dixie is also trying to battle with her teenage hormones resulting in a volatile temper and a giant crush on Adam. When Avril makes Dixie over for Adam's birthday party Dixie is literally stripped from her armour revealing her more fragile side. This provides a nicely balanced heroine you instantly want to root for.

 

Adam is a douchebag. Not as much as a douchebag as Jake from Water Baby (Water Baby is probably the most adult of the Minx titles) but he gets pretty close. Not only does he not realise that Dixie is crushing on him (even when he makes her give him advice on how to get closer to Megan) but he gives the warrior statue to an equally unappreciative Megan without a second's thought and even plays mind games with Dixie when he thinks she might beat him in the hapkido championship. Apart from being blonde he really has very few redeeming features.

 

Though Dixie harbours feelings for Adam for the majority of the book  the last thing you want is for her to get together with him. Enter Dillinger. Dillinger is the rather unbelievable bad boy. He's a tough guy with morals (not always logical morals) who, when he's not beating up Megan's brother is helping Dixie get out of her Adam-induced funk and win the championship. He is much more likeable than Adam but does feel strangely motivated. He's there to prove that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover (aka just because he's a street kid it doesn't mean he's out to murder you) but his desire to pound on Megan's admittedly annoying brother (a device to get the statue to continue to circulate LA) somewhat sullies it and makes when he is being nice a bit cheesy. The men in Dixie's family are always spot on though, in particular her twin brothers who are lively little monkeys and very endearing.

 

The ending is pretty predictable however because you're rooting for Dixie from the very beginning and she gets the ending she deserves (rather than the one she thinks she wants at the beginning) it has that warm, cute, satisfying feeling.

 

Much like the subject of Re-Gifters the art feels very male centric - it doesn't have the smoothness and artiness you expect from a graphic story aimed at young women - if anything it looks perfect for a comic aimed at pre-teen boys. I appreciate that a young woman new to graphic stories might reject it for something more elegant however if she is already into graphic novels she'll appreciate its indie feel and obvious quality. It somehow manages to balance simplicity with detail and is wonderfully lively - which is perfect for a story about martial arts. Also a quick thumbs up to Jesse from Good as Lily for the shading. It might just look like a bit of grey but that bit of grey adds so much dimension to Sonny and Marc's lines.

 

Re-Gifters is about learning to expand your horizons and by attempting to blend boys comics with a female protagonist it mostly succeeds on both physical and thematic levels. It is also a story about not only people but things going on journeys...so if you see a copy of Re-Gifters floating about it's probably the one I sent to Len. Do a blogger a favour and gift it on to someone you care about and maybe, like Dixie's statue, it might also eventually find its way back to Len.

You'll like Re-Gifters if you like:
Confessions of a Blabbermouth, My Faith in Frankie, The Next Karate Kid, Bamboo Blade, Peach Girl and being a tomboy.

Selected graphic novels also by Mike Carey:
Lucifer, The Sandman Presents: Petrefax and The Furies, various Hellblazer volumes, Batman: Gotham Knights #37: "Fear is the Key", Detective Comics #801-804: "The Barker: When You're Strange", My Faith in Frankie, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, various Crossing Midnight volumes, God Save the Queen, Faker #1-6, Confessions of a Blabbermouth, The Unwritten, Ultimate Elektra: Devil's Due #1-5, Spellbinders #1-6, various Fantastic Four volumes, various X-Men volumes, Ultimate Vision #1-5, Ender's Shadow, The Torch #1-8, Thor: Wolves of the North, Sigil #1-4, Red Sonja #0-6, Vampirella: Revelations, Wetworks: Worldstorm, Voodoo Child and The Stranded #1-5.

Novels also by Mike Carey:
The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, Dead Men's Boots, Thicker Than Water, The Naming of the Beasts and The Steel Seraglio (co-written with Linda Carey and Louise Carey).

Also by Sonny Liew:
Fighting Turtle, Malinky Robot: Collected Stories & Other Bits, Marvel's Sense and Sensibility, Au Pays des Merveilles, Le Tour du monde en bande dessinée vol 2, Marvel Adventures Spiderman #50, Wonderland, Liquid City (Vol.1, 2), Flight (Vol. 2, 5, 8) and My Faith in Frankie.

Also by Marc Hempel:
Sandman: "The Kindly Ones", Breathtaker, Mars, Blood of the Innocent, Gregory, Tug & Buster, Marvel Fanfare, Epic Illustrated, Heavy Metal, Jonny Quest, Tarzan the Warrior, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Flinch, My Faith in Frankie, The Dreaming, Lucifer, and Disney Adventures.

Minx Review: Good As Lily

This week's graphic novel in my Minx Review series is Good As Lily written by Derek Kirk Kim and illustrated by Jesse Hamm.

 

Good As Lily is about Korean American high school student Grace Kwon. After getting her head stuck in a magic birthday piñata Grace is visited by three versions of herself (a child, aged 29 and an elderly lady) who seem intent in ruining her life...which couldn't come at a worse time as she is desperately trying to keep her drama club from folding and also win the heart of her high school drama teacher. Through all these events she realises that turning eighteen is not the end of the world but just the start of a new one.

 

I need to address the elephants in the room: the story has nearly nothing to do with Lily and the cover art is drawn by Derek Kirk Kim whilst the inside art is by Jesse Hamm. I feel the only time a graphic novel should have a cover by an artist who has had nothing to do with the inside art is when the book contains art by multiple artists or if it is a trade paperback where each section was published separately using the cover artist. I mean I hate it when people buy a book then complain about the weird art when it is obvious from the cover what they're getting but in this instance I think it's fair to feel cheated. Though Derek is also an artist and quite obviously wanted a hand in the art of the story too nothing suggests a lack of faith in the inside art than to choose a separate cover artist (the biggest offender being using Kouyu Shurei's amazing cover art for standard western manga Return to the Labyrinth).

 

You can see more of Derek's art of Good As Lily here.

 

It is evident from the amount of story packed into Good As Lily that Derek is full of good ideas. Good As Lily is a fantasy with a subtext of embracing life, a slice of life drama about friends fighting to save their high school drama club and even a romance but thanks to the restrictions of the single volume format it feels like too much is going on to be full explored satisfyingly. For instance the first 28 pages (nearly a 1/4 of the entire page count) are dedicated to getting to know Grace's friends. Endearing as this set up is only Jeremy and Rona deserve such a detailed introduction as the other friends barely return again. Perhaps if there was no fantasy aspect we would be able to focus on the drama friends more but once the fantasy part kicks in and Grace's friends retire to the background it makes such a long beginning feel redundant and slightly wasteful. The rest of the story races to deal with the lack of balance and never really catches up.

 

Then there is the titular Lily. Lily is Grace's dead sister. She is supposed to be this heavy weight that Grace compares herself to throughout the story but she is barely referenced and when we eventually do find out who she is Grace's feelings towards her are resolved in a matter of panels in the middle of the story. Because the book is called Good As Lily you are on the constant look out for her or at least expect to be drip-fed hints about who she was. Because this does not happen it feels like the most unsatisfying aspect of the story.

 

The story is written in a friendly, sometimes even comical tone and Grace has good conflicts with her other selves (yet another reason why her friends are not needed). In particular she has trouble with her 29 year old self who also has a crush on her drama teacher. This finds a satisfying conclusion as does Grace's evolving friendship with Jeremy however her eventual friendship with her bully does feel less believable.

 

Jesse Hamm's art is detailed and very indie. I particularly like Grace's look. I can imagine her as a drummer of an indie rock band! There's the odd weird panel (and few too many floating heads for my liking) but it's mostly of the good quality you would expect from a Minx artist. It does, however, have a slightly stinted feel. At first I thought maybe Jesse was a new artist still trying to perfect his style but as I looked over Derek's notes on Good As Lily I realised Jesse was trying to recreate Derek's style rather than embrace his own which is a shame as you can tell there is something not quite comfortable about it. I would like to see something in his own style to see if it feels more relaxed and natural.

 

Good As Lily is probably the weakest of the Minx books though it is still worth a try if you have enjoyed the rest of the series. Despite its faults it is a perfect gateway for exploring the art and writing of Derek and Jesse. Just surfing around Derek's blog makes me want to read and watch more by him. I hope to feature more by both Derek and Jesse in the future.

You'll like Good As Lily if you like:
Freaky Friday, 13 Going on 30, 17 Again, Glee (and The Glee Project), Western slice of life manga, 1990s kids shows set in and around high school, cheesy Asian drama.

Also by Jesse Hamm:
Negative Burn, Hawkeye Volume Two and Hawkeye: Little Hits

Graphic novels written by Derek Kirk Kim:
Same Difference,  Flight Volume One, Bizarro World and Electric Ant Issue 1

Graphic novels drawn by Derek Kirk Kim:
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, The Eternal Smile and Prime Baby

Online Media by Derek Kirk Kim:
Mythomania, Tune, Yesterday and Orange Tango

Minx Review: Token

As the cat dispute continues (she's refusing to give up coming here) I present to you the next graphic novel in my Minx Review series: Token written by Alisa Kwitney and illustrated by Joëlle Jones.

It's the summer of 1987 and daddy's girl Shira is spending another summer alone seeing as her social life was ruined by an unfortunate incident with a bar mitzvah cake. Life's okay though, she's best friends with eighty year olds Pearl and Minerva and has her dad all to herself...until he starts dating his secretary. Feeling that her dad is changing for the worse Shira lashes out by shoplifting a scarf only to be spotted by Latino hottie Rafael but instead of turning her in Rafael offers her shoplifting lessons and so begins their flirty and thrilling relationship.

 

First of all YAY. A mainstream western graphic novel written AND illustrated by women. So it IS possible! More please!

  

Read Token on a beach / in the garden / by a pool / anywhere sunny and warm. It won't be half as enjoyable in the middle of winter (unless you need some reminding of what summer is like of course)! I wouldn't say it's anything new, but then it's not trying to be - it's the story of a daddy's girl learning to share her father with another woman wrapped up in a summer romance - but thanks to likeable, well shaped, well drawn characters it doesn't need to do anything crazy and daring to be enjoyable.

Shira is perfect for Minx's target audience: she's pretty but also gawky, cool but not part of the cool crowd, intelligent, self-aware, melodramatic and very spunky. It's very rare in mainstream graphic novels and most other genre writing for a feisty female character to be so well rounded (and also likeable) and I have to say it's because she's written by a woman. Male writers like Paul Dini, Ross Campbell and Joss Whedon get amazingly close to understanding the female mind (and I love them for it) but then there are people like Steven Moffat who think they write females better than they actually do and those who just don't care as long as the female has big boobs to bounce about. Believe it or not nothing beats a woman for understanding a woman! Or the pains of being a teenage girl (trust me guys there's much more to it that PMS). Alisa understands it perfectly and writes it perfectly, getting just the right balance of fragility and feistiness. She also fills Token with settings and secondary characters that are completely up an intelligent, daydreamy teenage girl's street: the 1980s John Hughes beach setting; a wry, 1940s screen siren, Jewish grandmother best friend and a charming bad boy love interest.

Rafael is hot. Just saying. Joëlle's art is fantastic (more on that later) and she manages to make him practically smoulder. For the first time in all the Minx books I can actually see why the lead falls for the boy. I would. The scene where he catches Shira shoplifting is so loaded! Shira's feistiness combined with Rafael's smoothness leads to some great banter and top notch flirting. Be still my beating heart! Usually I want to vomit when I read / watch a romance but I actually wanted to read Shira's and Rafael's scenes most of all - I wanted to see how their relationship would end considering all the complications connected to it - and I wanted to see them get it on (a bit of vicarious living).

Despite the dream ingredients Token also has a very realistic feel and resolution which I think is to it's credit. Shira's father's secretary is not an evil stepmother stereotype - she's actually really nice - any animosity is purely from Shira and it is up to Shira to realise it. The ending is also not a happily ever after ending. As Batman would say, Shira doesn't get everything she wants but she gets what she needs and when Alisa has been so careful to craft a story and characters with so many layers and dimensions it's the only correct ending there could be.

Now what was I saying about Joëlle's art? IT'S EPIC! It is proper mainstream stuff with all the quality and detail you would expect and see in an issue of Batman or X-Men whilst maintaining a unique and personal style. The characters' expressions are just perfect, very much taking Alisa's writing and running with it. I could look at Joëlle's art all day. It makes me so happy that she is now working with the big comic publishers. I would most definitely love to work with her should I ever get so lucky!

What was that? You want some endearing, perfectly written, perfectly drawn summer romance? Then get yourself a copy of Token!

You'll like Token if you like:
John Hughes' 1980s films, Dirty Dancing, The Lost Boys, Mermaids, Grandma's House, The O.C. and Ocean Waves (I Can Hear the Sea)

Also by Alisa Kwitney:
Till The Fat Lady Sings, The Dominant Blonde, Does She or Doesn't She?, On the Couch, Sex as a Second Language: A Novel, Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold, Vertigo Visions: The Phantom Stranger and Sandman: King of Dreams

Also by Joëlle Jones:
12 Reasons Why I Love Her, You Have Killed Me, Sexy Chix, Shojo Beat, Fables, Popgun, Portland Noir, Madman Atomic Comics #16, Dr. Horrible, Madame Xanadu, Troublemaker, House of Night, The Girl Who Owned a City, Spell Checkers and Ultimate Spider-Man #150

Folkestone Knit Bomb - "Women hold up half the sky"

Wednesday was the hottest day of the year so far so I paused my writing and took myself off to my favourite place in the world: Folkestone and the Leas. It's not a glamorous place. Some would call it faded and many parts are down right neglected but it still holds much beauty and magic for me. It also has a growing art community and I was very excited to see some knit bombing / yarn bombing (I've never seen it in real life). I saw some in the town centre covering some bollards and then as I walked down the art quarter I saw this:

Okay, the originator of the quotation (Chairman Mao) had a very questionable human rights record but the effort and good intentions that went into this knit bomb really cemented why I love Folkestone so much and why I hope to move to the Leas one day.

Here are some more pictures of art in Folkestone:

 

P.S. A lot of you guys liked my fox tails so when I get some time I'll do a series of posts on how to make them as well as how to make a faux fur scarf and possibly even a fur muff :-) Keep an eye out! 

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?

Minx Reviews: kimmie66

This week's Minx review is the graphic novel kimmie66 by Aaron Alexovich.

 

kimmie66 is a sci-fi noir about gothic teen Telly's search to find out not only why her best friend killed herself but also who she actually was. In Telly's world people spend all their free time (and the majority of their work / school time) online in virtual reality habitats called 'lairs'. The real world just isn't cool enough anymore. Once you pick a 'lair' you have to stick to it for the rest of your virtual life (let's hope you still like now what you liked when you were seven) and hopping lairs is a serious offense. In your lair you can be whoever you want to be (as long as it matches the theme of your lair) however Telly's avatar is pretty much her, which is great for us to latch onto her as a character but not so good for her when Kimmie kills herself. Telly has never met her best friend in real life and realises that everything she knows about Kimmie is whatever Kimmie wanted her to know, aka nothing real.

 

kimmie66 was the final Minx title I read (I think I finished it two months ago) and I sought it out more to complete my collection than because I wanted to read it. In retrospect that was a very dumb attitude but quite a few things put my younger self off buying it when I had the chance:

1. I judged the book by its cover. I couldn't deny the bottom half of the cover looked cool but the upside down line art of Telly looked a bit rubbish (the shaded version inside the book looks so much better).
2. At the back of each Minx book are samples of other titles. The sample for kimmie66 was not elegantly chosen. It featured some incredibly unattractive man and generally looked like the art didn't fit the pages properly (I'll talk more on that later).
3. I was still new to American and indie comics (I only read manga at the time) and was very close-minded about art styles.

The biggest positives about kimmie66 are the characters. Telly's humbleness is very endearing and combined with her uncertainty she becomes a unique 'detective' in what is basically a noir comic. The other characters also fulfil both the roles of stock noir characters and internet user tropes. Her helper is Nekokat (the queen of drama llamas), her brother is the guy who thinks with his fists (and the kind of idiot who trolls any Batman video on youtube that isn't set in the Nolanverse), super smooth hacker Coil is completely untrustworthy but completely essential, Kimmie's mother (a silver surfer) is the boffin with bad intentions, and not forgetting Kimmie who is the mysterious femme fatale.

The sci-fi setting is very imaginative - the most creative of the Minx titles - but it's detective plot is standard...there is only so much you can do in a single volume story. One of the biggest qualms people have is the 'confusing' ending. I wouldn't say it's confusing, I'd call it 'rushed'. Aaron devotes a lot of pages to establishing Telly's world and situation (which is very necessary) but means the final third of the detective story, though still packed with unique ideas, does not have enough space to use the same level of detail. Cramming so much in will always confuse people. Telly's personal ending is much easier to understand and better paced. It is very thoughtful and relevant and as someone who spent too much time making and breaking online friendships as a teenager I very much appreciate it.

The art is love or hate. I'd say the more inclined you are to indie comics the more open you will be to Aaron's style. If you've only ever read manga or mainstream American comics you'll probably hate it. The characters are very stylised (Aaron had previously worked on the designs for Invader Zim), the most stylised out of all the Minx comics. The characters are stubby and the backgrounds are usually quite bare. Aaron uses thick lines and extreme facial expressions to portray emotions. Looking at the images without the words they can tend towards the ugly but once you add the dialogue they become perfect.

A lot of the pages either have black backgrounds or are white with extremely thick black borders - these look fine - but about 10% of the pages are white without thick borders, it are these that look like they have not been sized to fit the page. It is very off-putting as it makes the book look amateurish which, considering Minx was an imprint of DC just wasn't the case. Whoever picked them as the sample pages for kimmie66 in the rest of the Minx titles doesn't deserve to work in a visual industry as there were much more attractive and representative pages on offer.

Five years on from when I first picked up a copy of kimmie66 I've read a hell of a lot more graphic novels. The biggest thing to change is I'm much more likely to buy a mainstream graphic novel by an indie artist now than one with a more stereotypical style. Of course story is paramount but those artists with unique styles seem to understand and express emotion and mise en scene so much more easily than those worried about accurately depicting muscle tone and hair strands. I think it's natural when you first get into graphic novels to judge a story by the quality of its art (perfect art = perfect story, right?) but as you read more you begin to understand that it is the synergy between the art and the story which makes a graphic novel work, not the art alone. Flipping through kimmie66 you may find the art too blocky and the expressions too over the top but once you start reading you'll understand how perfectly matched to the characters it is and how enjoyable those characters are.

You'll like kimmie66 if you like:
Serial Experiments Lain, Paprika, The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly, dystopian sci-fi novels such as Brave New World and those graphic novel artists from the 1990s who were mainstream whilst retaining very unique styles such as Sam Kieth, Bruce Timm, Tim Sale and Mark Badger.

Also by Aaron Alexovich:
Eldritch!, Serenity Rose and Confessions of a Blabbermouth (art only).