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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Girls #1-2
Ethan is an aimless young store clerk with girl problems. Namely, nothing
packing a set of ovaries is interested in him. The Luna brothers
not-so-subtly note this in the books opening scene in which our man
alternately chats with and beats off to a magazine photo. Later he is shot
down by a busty store patron, then teased by a bar bunny. His luck takes a
turn for the surreal when a beautiful naked woman quite literally falls into
his arms on an abandoned highway, but trouble is following close behind her.
A gun-toting redneck and his slack-jawed boy are hot on the nameless
lady’s trail. Even worse, the moniker-less mademoiselle may not be of this
world.
Jonathan’s art is crisp but unremarkable. He’s an exceptional colorist and
a solid storyteller whose work looks more influenced by cinema than any
particular comic artist. The book reads like a highly detailed film
storyboard than a comic book. Girls doesn’t look like a lot of mainstream
comics, which is nice, but looking like a lot of mainstream movies isn’t
much better. He moves the action along well enough but stumbles over
talking head sequences which are largely flat and uninspired. His art looks
like Rob G. pencils finished by Josh Middleton, which is in no way a
complaint, but he can’t sustain the kind of raw kineticism Rob G. brings to
a book.
It’s hard to imagine an actual living, breathing girl becoming overly
interested in Girls. If the disingenuously lascivious covers don’t turn on
the twelve already-alienated mainstream American comics readers sporting
double-X chromosomes, the fact that every female character in the book is
established only in relation to the male characters probably will. The cute
girl in the supermarket is the one who flirts with Ethan; the cock-tease bar
slut is the pretty girl who won’t sleep with him; the redhead in the dress
is some combination of Ethan’s ex-girlfriend and the local lawman’s current
one (he assures us of this when he notes that he is “eating her pie”). For
a series that spends much of its time casting Our Hero as a sensitive but
lonely young man who is ostensibly respectful (albeit afraid) of the ladies,
the book certainly seems to cast every woman within its pages as a Madonna
or a whore. Every woman, at least, except for our wandering naked mystery
lady who is neither a slut nor a saint; she’s an alien, of course, and she
fucks Ethan as soon as she meets him. (But only so she can reproduce – you
know how it is with those silly broads, eh?)
Maybe not literally. The Luna brothers are playing coy with what appears to
be the central plot of the book. Is she an alien, a clone, or something
more sinister? Two issues in and the story remains nearly as opaque as
ever. The final page of the second chapter is eye-catching and rather
beautifully rendered by Jonathan. It’s enough to maintain interest going
into the third issue, but if the brothers Luna don’t reveal a couple of
their cards soon, the temptation to fold before the game is over may prove
overwhelming.
-- Bryan Miller
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Brothers Joshua and Jonathan Luna present what is certain to be many a
comics fan’s closest contact with girls in…well, Girls, their latest series
from Image. The covers of the first two issues would suggest that “Topless
Dancing” might be added to the front end of the title (or perhaps “Gone
Wild” attached to the back), but the interiors suggest a sci-fi story
masquerading as small-town character study.
The Rob G. comparison is strangely apropos as Girls, in its better moments,
is reminiscent of Teenagers from Mars. The two page scene that opens the
second issue—almost certainly the best two pages of the book and without a
doubt the most convincing—is similarly adept at capturing the small town
malaise of dropouts and outcasts. The born again father preaching to a
roomful of angsty, restless kids smoking pot and thumbing through magazines
is vivid and real in a way the rest of the book would like to be but too
often is not. For every intriguing exchange between the characters there is
a clunky and self-consciously scripted scene like the borderline torturous
supermarket encounter in the opening pages. Scripter Joshua imagines a
scenario too convenient—beautiful girl, ostentatious double entendres
followed by inexplicable character shift—to be anything other than faux
character establishment masquerading as quirky slice-of-life twice-baked and
too clever by more than half.