Green Hair, Still Don’t Care

Thanks to the Comic Book Code of 1954, which eviscerated comics for a generation in the U.S., comic books when I was a kid really were for kids. Even the publisher Classics Illustrated intended its comics to make classic novels accessible to kids and edited the material accordingly. It should be no surprise, then, that by the time the Code was effectively scrapped I (along with most others of my generation) had set aside comic books except for the occasional counterculture novelty by Robert Crumb and his ilk. When mainstream comics again came to be commonly aimed at a largely (or primarily) adult readership, as many were by the 1980s, I was out of the habit of buying them. I didn’t restart until after 2000, and only then as a deliberate decision to dip a toe in these particular waters of popular culture in order to be able to talk about them a little. It was a good moment to restart, because some very remarkable work was being done by first-rate authors including Mark Millar, Neil Gaiman, and Bryan Lee O'Malley.

Canadian author Bryan Lee O'Malley is best known (and critically well-regarded) for his off-beat 6-volume Scott Pilgrim comics.  (The 2010 movie adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World deserved a better box office than it got, by the way.) His 2014 graphic novel Seconds is also worth a read; it warns us that second chances have consequences of their own. O'Malley’s current work in progress is the series Snotgirl. Volume 3 arrived in my mail a few days ago.

In Snotgirl Volume 1 Green Hair Don’t Care (2017), Lottie Person is a 25-y.o. Instagram fashion blogger in California with enough followers to make a living at it and to be modestly famous in a modern social-media way. Her always-fabulous online persona is very different from her allergy-ridden real self. Lottie impersonates her online persona in public since she knows full well that in our world of cell phones any false step will end up online, too. She and her circle of frenemies all adopt styles tailored for social media presentation. Lottie gives her frenemies nicknames (though she doesn’t use them to their faces) such as Cutegirl and Normgirl. Lottie’s behavior is often reprehensible, yet humanly understandable enough that the reader doesn’t dislike her for it. The nickname “Snotgirl” is given to Lottie (passive aggressively and to her face) by Caroline, a genuinely cool girl (Lottie’s nickname for her: Coolgirl) whom Lottie is desperate to befriend. Lottie, however, is having some side effects from her allergy medication, and she can’t quite remember if she physically attacked Caroline in a bar bathroom. There is additional drama with Lottie’s ex-boyfriend. O’Malley lets his characters wonder what is real and what is fake – and if what is real counts as real if not captured by cell phone.

Volume 2 California Screaming advances the various plots and lets us know there is more to Caroline than meets the eye. The newly released Volume 3 Is This Real Life? deepens the mystery around Caroline: especially when a male friend of Lottie discovers a photo of Caroline who somehow looks the same in an old 1999 (!) magazine he finds in the library. Normgirl is getting married in the O.C. and Lottie will be there. In the lead-up to the wedding there is a murder at a bachelor party, continued ambiguity all around in sexual orientation, and a surprise appearance of Caroline.

A comic book about a fashion blogger requires creative artwork, of course, and illustrator Leslie Hung handles the job well in all three volumes.

I am about as far from the target demographic of this comic as can be imagined. (Presumably it is targeted at younger Millennials like the characters in it.) But it is a hallmark of any truly good book, comic, or script that it can be appreciated on multiple levels by multiple audiences. (Disney movies succeed, for example, when parents like them too.) This is not just another superhero fantasy like so many popular comics out there, but a thoughtful and engaging comic firmly planted in the present. I recommend giving it a try.

Thumbs Up.

Rick Springfield – Comic Book Heroes