Review: Water Baby

Water Baby – Ross Campbell

One of Brody’s legs was bitten off by a shark while she was surfing.  Now she sits around in bad-ass, skimpy outfits feeling sorry for herself and dreaming of shape-shifting sharks.  Her best friend has been trying to take care of her and things are going well enough until Brody’s no-good-ex Jake shows up and pukes all over the apartment.  So Brody decides to drive him back home to New York.  So…not a whole lot happens, outside of the shark attack at the beginning of the story.  But the way that Brody is tough and damaged and unknowable is appealing enough along with the strength of the portrayal of her relationships to make this a worthwhile read.

Review: Emiko Superstar

Emiko Superstar – Mariko Tamaki, illus by Steve Rolston

Emiko’s story starts off with a gigantic girl crush on a vibrant mess of a performance artist which leads her to a weekly rave/art collective.  She forces herself out of her shell and makes a name for herself, but in the process exploits and takes for granted the people around her.  She tries on a subculture for size, and some of it sticks but some of it is just for show.

I don’t think it was until the end of this comic that I realized the author had also written Skim.  The characters are very different types of outsiders, but I can still see some similarities.  It’s interesting to compare their differences, this one being much more a story about a teenager for teenagers, and Skim being a more contemplative story about a teenager for adults.  More stuff happens in this one, and Emiko is more easily relatable than Skim was.

But at its heart, it’s still the story of a teenager who doesn’t fit in trying to figure out who her friends are and if there’s a place for her anywhere.  She doesn’t always do the right or the good thing, but even when her motives are selfish, she’s not a monster.  Also, it’s nice when Minx books were written by women and have female characters who actually seem like real teenage girls.

Review: New York Four

The New York Four – Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly

I still have enough hope that books in the now-defunct Minx line will either be interesting or interesting failures to pick them up as they trickle into the library. I liked what little of Wood’s DMZ I’ve read, and I obviously like to read books set in New York. But for all that, the only thing this book has going for it is its art. The depictions of New York are realistically detailed and as far as I can tell, spot-on accurate. I found everything else about it insufferable. It comes across like a morality play about technology (don’t forsake the real world for an online, ersatz one) and young-womanhood, but written by a middle-aged man (who, at least in this instance, seems to be of the school that writing interesting female characters is nothing more than throwing together collections of “quirky” traits.) The sum is that instead of being relatable, none even approach likable or mysterious (as he seems to be going for with a couple of them). I also found the NY 101 asides patronizing and unnecessary. Or maybe I’m just bristling at the characterization of my neighborhood and borough: “Park Slope, Brooklyn. (NY 101: As good as Brooklyn gets)” The plot is also a bit all over the place, theoretically because it’ll be part of a series (which may continue even though Minx isn’t), but I don’t believe these characters enough to find out what’s really going on with them.