yjsoon

Comics recommendations. If I know you (and you can return things in one piece, or thereabouts), email me if you want to borrow anything I recommend.

Hopeless Savages: Ground Zero [amazon link] Written by Jen Van Meter Art by Bryan Lee O’Malley (with Chynna Clugston-Major, Terry Dodson, Catherine Norrie, Christine Norrie and Andi Watson) Published by Oni Press

Teen romance comedy graphic novel, featuring the titular family (Dirk Hopeless and Nikki Savage are the Brit rock-star parents to a vaguely dysfunctional cross-Atlantic transplant family) from the first Hopeless Savages volume — which, though entertaining, left less space for the reader to breathe through all the hunt-down-our-parents’-kidnappers shenanigans; further, I’ve already lost track of this sentence. Talk about needing to breathe.

Plot gist: Zero (youngest daughter) realises Ginger (likable nerd boy at school) has held quite the candle for her since childhood, but his reticence precludes any action on his feelings. Cue dramatic speech which I shall reproduce in full because it touched (or pressed rather hard on, if I do have to admit) a nerve in this reader:

“I don’t want to be the nice guy you hang out with while you repair the damage done to your self-image by egotistical thugs who wildly underestimate your worth. I don’t want your head on my shoulder while you tell me what a great friend I am, so sensitive, just like a brother. I don’t want to have to act happy for you when you go off with some charismatic idiot who – at best – thinks you’re an ordinary girl… and not the treasure I know you to be. I don’t want to look at you wistfully every so often, but never dare admit I’ve been wild about you since first grade because it would complicate your life and ruin the friendship. I’ve seen it. I don’t want it. Sorry.”

… ow. After her shock, Zero considers her feelings, but isn’t allowed to date and gets grounded (hence the clever, clever title — I really only just found this out). The series takes place against the backdrop of an Osbournes-esque filming of the family’s daily activities and doesn’t come up short on drama, teen angst nor things being blown up. And revenge on nasty producer-type, yay!

O’Malley’s art is describable as “squished and cartoony,” but is a lot more dynamic than Norrie’s was in the first volume. The latter, with other guest artists (Chynna Clugston-Major of Blue Monday fame! Yay!), flesh out the family’s backstories, most notably Twitch Strummer’s own lost romance — a great gay character, and a great gay character’s love story, though probably just in comparison to the nonsense out there in the comics world (Northstar? bleh).

Very much classic British punk fun, and who can resist that “music you love” quote?