Friday, September 26, 2014

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: The Adventures of Superhero Girl


The Adventures of Superhero Girl
Written and illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks
Published by Dark Horse (2013)

I used to live in Halifax, and while I was there The Coast (the free weekly newspaper) ran two comics by local creators: True Story by Mike Holmes (which my friend Jen appeared in) and Superhero Girl. I thought that I read The Coast every week, but there were times where I felt that Superhero Girl didn't make any sense and that I must have been missing pages. I checked online but I hadn't actually missed any, leading me to assume that reading this comic at one page a week was a pretty terrible format (at least sometimes). There were one off stories but, as there's only so much you can do in half a page, there were also multiple part stories that I clearly was incapable of following when serialized.

As for the story, Superhero Girl is a superhero in a not very large city where while there are still supervillains, they are kind of crummy and are more likely to be the type to thrown marshmallows than destroy the city. Superhero Girl  has to deal with trying to keep a secret identity (she is bad at this), figuring out how to pay rent (she is also bad at this), trying to have a social life (ditto), and fighting crime (she's actually pretty good at this). It's goofy and funny, and I really have to say that it reads _much_ better in collected form.

I've written before about Hicks' art (and how much I liked it), and it's still good here. Her character designs are good and she's great at expressions. Plus there are kitties and ninja and evil future duplicates and... The worst thing about it probably comes from the fact that it was told at the rate of one page a week. I'd rather have just read a complete story about Superhero Girl. Still, Hicks' has said she'd like to draw more at some point, so maybe some day...

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