Customer Reviews

Billi 99

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It takes a village to raise a kid: chortle all you like at the cliche, but there's a reason it's so dam' prevalent. It's true.

It also takes a village to raise a superhero, and keep them in tights. For a while, it's been popular to look at the symbiotic relationship between superheroes and supervillains, and how the one needs and feeds on the other, and what does this say about us? —Far better, far more rewarding, far more humane to look at the symbiotic relationship between the superhero and the people they fight for, live with, protect, save.

And if the superhero discovers a different source of power than tights, and masks, and fists? Well. That would be telling.

Billi was written in the mad old bad old days of the first Bush recession, and it will remind you that we've all been justifiably angry and full of despair and longing for hope before. Like a lot of us, I got seduced by the fool's gold of a very different 1999, and I set Billi aside; that Sarah was just a little ahead of her time doesn't make this any less of a powerful tonic for the here and now.

I read the entire volume out of the vain hope that it would grow more interesting and compelling. Unfortunately, it did not. The art was the best part for me and I didn't even really care for it. It would be hard to choose which I disliked the most: the plot, the characters, or the dialogue. Contrived, forced, and uninspiring all come to mind as words that could be used described all three.