Review - Minx Books
Having now finished its first year’s publishing schedule, DC Comics’ Minx Books line has well-achieved what it set out to do in the first place — offer graphic novels for teen-age girls who might be inclined to read Manga but don’t find anything from English language creators to engage them.
For the most part, the books have followed a formula that no doubt speak to their intended audience’s life experience — misunderstood individualist takes action and must face the consequences of those actions as well as the rewards. These rewards, however, are not money or glory but another step on the ladder to adulthood where things tend to fall into place through accepting one’s responsibility.
In other words, these are fables — and mostly good ones at that.
Most recently, the series released its season capper, “Kimmie66,” an intriguing bit of cyber sci-fi by Aaron Alexovich. Buoyed by a cartoonish energy, the book follows the adventures of Telly, a Goth girl whose world of the future involves a lot of “Second Life” interactions. When her friend, the titular Kimmie66, sends her a suicide not, Telly must traverse further layers of the virtual communities at large in order to find out what really happened to her friend — and if her friend ever really existed at all.
Alexovich does a wonderful job at investigating that state of interpersonal relationships and identity online — ideas that have surely crossed the minds of the books’ audience as they forge this brave new world every time they instant message with someone they’ve never met. Alexovich takes in all the implications of such a system, but doesn’t become bogged down in the topic, instead using it to move the adventure along — it’s a sincerely fun book.
Alexovich is also the only creator to take the thread through the Minx line — the search for identity and the power of story — and place it into a science fiction setting. For a more down-to-earth version, there is none better than the line’s inaugural title, “The Plain Janes.” This is also about a search for self in a strange, unreal world — a city girl in a suburban high school.
Author Cecil Castellucci and artist Jim Rugg deliver the tale with a kind of deadpan surrealism — in many ways, art and story combine into a kind of Dan Clowes Jr. feel. The story follows Jane, whose family escapes the emotional aftermath of a terrorist attack in Metro City by going to the sleepy burbs of Kent Waters and enrolling Jane in the safe haven of Buzz Aldrin High School. Here, she befriends several other Janes and their connection blossoms into a private club that enacts a barrage of art activism — or, more appropriately, terrorism — upon the town. The group calls itself P.L.A.I.N. — or People Loving Art in Neighborhoods — and what follows is a variation of the old chestnut perpetuated by films like “Footloose,” where adults over react to teens fumbling around for their own modes of expression.
“The Plain Janes” tackles all the topics that the readers the title is aimed to will probably be grappling with at the time they read it — typical ideas like the meaning of friendship, the hierarchy of social groups, how to negotiate love, the beauty of oddballs, the acceptance of those who are different and those who are the same. It also addresses some subjects that may foretell more than they reflect the lives of their audience — the nature of art, how it is fueled by pain, the place of the artist in society, how fads happen, the movement of crowds.
More than anything, however, “The Plain Janes” is a happy treatise on the idea that creativity fuels change and community and the lack of it creates stagnation, unchanging pools of suburban neighborhoods that are inhabited by kids who once had dreams before they choked on the stillness.
Other Minx Books present a similar backdrop, even if the ideas underlying aren’t quite as heady, nor the presentation as charming. “Confessions of a Blabbermouth”— written by father/daughter team Mike and Louise Carey and illustrated by Alexovich — presents a similar tale within a British high school setting. The story pits a hypersensitive teen blogger — Tasha — against an old school writer who is about to become her stepfather and his daughter, a supposedly accomplished “real” writer. The book enters some of the same thematic territory as “Janes” and “Kimmie,” but mostly plays it out as teen satire.
Also taking place in the theater that is high school — actually, literally, since it involves a drama club — is “Good As Lily” — written by Derek Kirk Kim and drawn by Jesse Hamm. In this book, teen-age Grace finds herself faced with three other versions of herself — a toddler, a 30-year old and an elderly spinster — in the ultimate absurd example of self-reflection.
In “Lily,” facing yourself is equitable with facing your own story — in it, a teenager views versions of herself — even future ones — with regret. She’s forcing her now onto the emotional lives of her yesterday and tomorrows. This is all wrapped up in the emotional specter of her dead sister — the titular Lily — someone robbed of a future against whom Grace compares herself.
Not as high concept, but with more subtle results, is “Re-Gifters,” written by Mike Carey in peak form and with lively cartooning by Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel. In this book, the idea of taking a gift and passing it along to someone else becomes a kind of viral karma. The meaning of the gift changes with each giving and, with it, the situation of each recipient. In this way, a gift reveals the inner logic of each stop on the path.
The original gifter is Dixie, first generation Korean American in high school, ace student of the Korean martial art of Hapkido and child to people who lost their livelihood in the Rodney King riots in Lost Angeles. Dixie has a horrible crush on a kid in her Hapkido class that is getting her off track — and her impulsive tendencies, buoyed by her temper, are getting her in trouble.
Carey brings all these elements together with energy and wraps them around the notion of “re-gifting,” as well as utilizing the idea of “ki” — that being a universal energy that binds everyone and everything — in order to give power to a circular motion of good feeling. That is, the person who gave the gift originally, if they gave it with honest intentions, will benefit in the end from the re-gifting — it will return and energize the original giver with “ki” when they most need it, it seems.
The only really weak link in the Minx chain is “Clubbing,” which follows the adventures of cutesy Goth girl Lottie as she summers in her grandparents’ country club working at the golf. Strangely, the plot has a bit in common with the recent movie “Hot Fuzz,” itself a riff on a British suspense genre, as Lottie traverses the historical legends of the quaint village that serves as her summertime reform school — and works to unlock the sorts of secrets that those little villages always seem to have in the best British horror.
The book can be pleasant enough in parts, but the character of Lottie is a bit of a problem. The first third of the book lags, devoted to getting to know a character who really isn’t that likable — or maybe it’s just me. I can’t muster much sympathy for a whiny girl who spends $300 on footwear and then is clueless enough to bring them to the country. It’s a signpost to the characterization — rather than someone who rises to the occasion and makes adventure wherever she finds herself she spends more time whining about no cell phone access and generally living up to the cliché of a spoiled teen.
One of the recurring themes in the imprint — and one that “Clubbing” falters on — is that many of the books not only capture their central character in an adventure, but one that is a point of transformation. In “Clubbing,” however, what information Lottie might have taken in is not calculated into change — rather it’s all confirmation of how fabulously exciting she is. She enters the story with an ego and leaves it with a larger one — that’s hardly exciting character growth.
One likes to see heroes challenged and take away knowledge from the experience of living up to that challenge —
unfortunately, I don’t get the sense that Lottie takes away any knowledge other than she wants more adventure to make her seem extremely exciting to boys. That’s just not a satisfying way to wrap of a character’s movement from there to here. There’s nothing wrong with it — any given Scooby Doo story accomplishes the same — but I expected a little more out of a title in this imprint. There was a cartoonish charm to the original character sketches that disposed of the mildly offensive eye candy aspect to Lottie and framed the story in a single emotional dimension that might have ended up elevating it — sadly, the opted for something different and the story suffers from the art’s pretensions.
One bad apple doesn’t spoil a whole bunch of girls, as the Osmonds say, and for once, those Salt Lake strutters are correct — Minx is a great line of books. Christmas is coming and a couple of these would make a nice little package not just for a teenage girl, but for anyone who likes a good book. But don’t forget the teenage girl in your life who might need something good to read.
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