Comic Reviews: IvyQuinn vs Beronica, DC/Archie Fanfiction

Old School Harley and Ivy beside Betty and Veronica dressed up as Harley and Ivy

Harley and Ivy Meet Betty and Veronica

A rollicking blast of a crossover comic, wherein Harley and Ivy go undercover in Riverdale to prevent Hiram Lodge from wiping out Sweetwater Swamp, but instead end up accidently swapping bodies with Betty and Veronica. A little problem like suddenly being underage won’t derail their plans, however. Betty and Veronica, though? Not thrilled to be stuck in the bodies of two famous Sirens and stuck in Gotham City with all the pissed off criminals who want to do in Harley and Ivy.

Comic Reviews: Open Earth

Scene over Earth, with a floating space station. In the right corner, two young men and one woman stand with the man in the middle draping his arms over the woman and the other man's shoulders.

Open Earth is a short story, essentially, about the first generation of humans born in a space station orbiting Earth, after we have managed to ruin the planet/blow ourselves up or something. The main action centers on Rigo, as she tries to grapple with wanting a special attachment to her friend Carter, when the first generation is predominantly polyamorous and against partnered attachments.

Two Mini Reviews: Archival Quality and Kim Reaper

Archival Quality, by Ivy Noelle Weir

Archival Quality is a gem of a little comic. Starring Celeste Walden, who has just lost her library job due to a nervous breakdown, the story follows her explorations as archivist in a strange and secretive library. There's a mystery to uncover, one that becomes deeply personal to her as she begins to identify with the ghost contacting her. But these things are harder to investigate when people question your perceptions at every turn, and maybe you question your own.

Delving into the dark history of the treatment of mental illness in America, and reflecting on lingering perceptions and reactions that all people who have mental illness must face, Archival Quality transcends its mystery format to be exploratory and highly relatable. I read it in one sitting and will probably purchase a paperback copy for my collection later in the year when it's published.

I'd also say that this story in itself would be a good text for cultural/literary studies for young people, and it could be well paired with many staples in literature that deal with a narrator that is treated as unreliable or dismissed based on their mental status.

Kim Reaper, Vol 1 by Sarah Graley

This little book is ten thousand percent adorable. The art and style reminds me a bit of the spooky-cute books in the late nineties like Lenore from Roman Dirge and the Nightmares & Fairytales. Granted, the story isn't super deep, and things move fast, but I really enjoyed the fast-paced shenanigans between two girls crushing on each other while dealing with ghouls and reapers and zombies.

Good clean lesbian fun, with little drama. I'll definitely be following this title as long as they're writing it.


I received copies of these titles from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mini Review: Mae Vol 1

Mae (by Gene Ha) is a super entertaining little quest in which the titular character’s sister Abbie reappears after years of being missing, and in the span of a day, ropes Mae into a quest to save their father. They go into a wondrous alternate world, where Abbie proceeds to try to find their father mostly through blunt force, and Mae finds that her skills aren’t entirely useless here, either.

Vol 1 ends after a few failed attempts at rescue, so keep an eye out for volume 2, which won’t drop until January 2019. Until then, the author's website has a sample you can read online for free.

COMIC REVIEWS: The Scarecrow Princess

The Scarecrow Princess

by Federico Edrighi

Morrigan Moore is a 14-year-old girl in Somewhere, England. Her mother and brother are a pair of well-known YA authors who write about fairytales, dragging her along to places where they can hunker down for research and writing. No one asked her if she wanted to live this life, but she doesn’t have much choice.

The Scarecrow Princess has the same feel of Labyrinth, thanks to the main antagonist The King of Crows, but overall, it feels more like Coraline with the normal world blending with the supernatural elements. The Scarecrow Princess is a bit like a fairytale, but think more Brothers Grim on acid than standard Disney. Some of the imagery is legit disturbing. For all of these reasons, if I had read this when I was 12-16, I would’ve loved it.

Plot/Characters 7/10

As a character, Morrigan isn’t very likable at first. She scowls her way through her first several pages, complaining loudly and being biting and sarcastic about having to deal with her famous family. Granted, they give her reason to complain about being ignored.

Girl with fluffy blonde hair scowls at her phone in the backseat of a car.

Things change as the King of Crows enters the picture, holding her mother and brother hostage, and threatening to devastate the town. Once Morrigan’s mother and brother are taken out of the picture, her character begins to come to life. The moral decisions suddenly become very, very hard.

Does it matter if other people are hurt in the fight against the King of Crows? Is she willing to sacrifice herself to win? In the end, most of the development centers on Morrigan figuring out how she’s able to make decisions for herself.

The King of Crows as a character is a kind of foil for Morrigan. He’s greedy, selfish, cowardly, and manipulative, but he is wholly unrepentant for who he is. Morrigan is predominantly uncertain, but as events unfold, she is a tremendously brave and selfless heroine…. And that may be the problem. It’s hard to have a sense of self while being too selfless. Has she given up the opportunity to create her own role, while grumpily tagging along with her family? Additionally, while the King is slippery and will try anything to get his hooks into Morrigan, she’s less skilled at being dishonest about her motives. If this were a superhero comic, she’d never manage the dual identity thing.

I’m a little iffy on the minor characters. Her mother and brother are nice. Her friend is nice. There are some teenage boys who seem… nice… They just aren’t very fleshed out. It’s just Morrigan and the King of Crows, really. And while it isn’t necessary for Morrigan’s friends to play a huge role in the story, I think more character development would have improved the overall story and increased the stakes.

There are also more twists than I’d expected from the outset. I wasn’t completely blindsided, but it was more intense than I’d expected. That’s a plus.

Art 7/10

Mum: “For the illustrations, I’m already thinking of a synthetic and dirty stroke, without any pointless virtuosities.”

Edgar: “And make readers hate you?”

Amusing dialogue above lampshades the author/artist’s style.

Morrigan and The King of Crows fight in jagged, sweeping strokes.

The art in TSP has a rough style. It’s reminiscent of 80s comic books like The Sandman and 90s Adult Swim. So while it doesn’t look beautiful at first, it really accentuates the action as the story progresses.

The characters aren’t terribly detailed but they are easy to recognize. Especially Morrigan, of course, who has stick-like legs and long blonde hair that floofs around behind her a fluffy cloud. At the very least, this is NOT a case of a teenage girl being drawn like she’s actually in her early twenties. She is and looks like a kid.

In fact, as we move towards the fight scenes, the style sacrifices clarity a little, but it also elevates the aesthetic quality. There are some grim scenes, and as Morrigan gains more power, the scenes become more and more grandiose.

Narrative Themes:

Self-sufficiency/Self-actualization

Heroism/What it is/What it justifies

Identity in Contrast to One’s Family

(lightly) Friendship

The King of Crows gives Morrigan some advice on self-actualizaton.

I think the questions surrounding heroism and use of power are probably explored the most strongly,  although there is a lot of discussion about taking a stand. We don’t see too much after the final showdown, so it’s hard to suss out what decisions Morrigan has made for herself.

TL;DR

This book is an enjoyable read with a pretty typical protagonist. Regardless, I enjoyed watching her strength grow, and the overall message to learn to be your own person, but that doesn’t require getting rid of everything else in your life.  

I’d recommend for anyone who enjoyed Coraline and maybe the Courtney Crumrin books. Very fun, interesting internal conflict.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

COMIC REVIEWS: Joyride Vol 1

Joyride

In the near future, humankind has finally found life in the universe! And we are TERRIFIED. In response, the government creates a dome called SafeSky to protect us from extraterrestrial life and have used this fear as an excuse to create a fascist, controlled society. As you do. Or as humans do, anyway. Shock Doctrine engage! Power up the giant gun on the moon!

Characters/Plot 8/10

The characters of Joyride are relatable namely because they are familiar types without being stereotypes. Namely, in another title, Dewydd would probably be the lead, haplessly following his manic pixie dreamgirl Uma into the great beyond. Instead, within the first volume, all three leads have Goals, Motivation, and Background that make their actions reasonable, if not always wise or expected.

For some it might be hard to relate to Uma’s enthusiastic (to the point of irrationality) embrace of flinging herself into space, intent on never coming back. But when you find out what’s happened to her, it all makes sense. Dewydd is in fact following Uma because he loves her (this is barely a spoiler), but this is complicated by the fact that her character isn’t there to teach him anything, and she has romantic inclinations of her own.

Catrin starts as your standard security guard getting swept up in the hero’s madcap adventures, but turns out to be a whole lot more. She’s also Uma’s enemies to friends to potential love, and it’s done in a slow way that I wholeheartedly approve of.

I have to admit that I’m strongly in favor of slow burns over insta-love, no matter the genre, but especially for LGB characters, everything tends to happen at once, because the writers often lose interest after sweeps to knock one of them off. Boo. In Joyride vol 1, we’re still eeking toward friendship.

The side characters are also worth paying attention to, especially the robot/ship’s pilot/Uma’s text buddy and the alien wanderer they pick up at their first stop who is constantly nonplussed or horrified by the antics of the humans he’s fallen in with.

If I had a criticism to make, it’s that the emotional resolution of the final chapter comes pretty quickly. But I’m willing to excuse it since the story is otherwise well-paced and Uma tends to be mercurial in nature. It feels believable that she would shift her feelings very quickly from one state to another.

Art 7/10

I grade comic art on a few specific criteria: Can I tell what’s happening? (Clear lines, distinguishable action, etc.) Are the characters identifiable with recognizable facial expressions? And are there moments to elevate the sequential drawing to art?

Joyride gets high points on clarity of action and emotive characters. The designs for the aliens are neat, too, and it was interesting without being too cutesy, gross, or ridiculous. The panels are well laid out and the artist does an excellent job of directing they eye through the course of action, even when there are floating panels or smaller panels layered on top of a larger scene.

The comic misses out on higher Art points, but that isn’t an aim of this volume, and there are some very well composed scenes of our teens looking up at a huge field of stars and the entire Protex scene with Uma and Catrin has a lot of meaning pressed into a few pages.

Also, space dance party.

Two women and a robot dance

Narrative Themes:

Important themes:

Bio-fam Loyalty vs Found Family

Security vs Freedom

Human Expectations vs Alternative Alien Logics

I won’t go into details on these at the end of this volume because it would involve spoilers and I need to see the full arcs to accurately judge. What I will say at this moment is that the fact that these themes are present is a plus for the title. You could easily just have a group of teens run off and have adventures with no deeper connection for any of the characters. I appreciate what’s started here, particularly the dystopian elements, as dystopia literature has been a research interest of mine and I’ve taught dystopia lit. Love it.

You can’t do dystopian Earth without making the human connections and addressing the issues of violence and conflicted loyalties and values, but the story doesn’t get too bogged down in philosophizing either.

TL;DR

Overall, I’m going with a definite recommendation. I picked this volume up as a free review copy for Netgalley, simply based on the LGBT label, but if I’m honest, I would be interested in the story regardless based on the dystopian and sci fi content.

The fact that other reviews keep going on about SPACE GIRLFRIENDS doesn’t hurt. I’ve already secured the second volume, and I’ll be preordering the third.