Emily the Strange: Lost, Dark and Bored, Volume 1 (Emily the Strange: Dark Horse Comics) (Vol 1) [Paperback]

Rob Reger (Author), Jessica Gruner (Author), Brian Brooks (Author), Kitty Remington (Author), Buzz Parker (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 12, 2006

Emily the Strange is not your ordinary thirteen-year-old girl - she's got a razor-sharp wit as dark as her jet-black hair, a posse of moody black cats and famous friends in very odd places! She's got a broodingly unique way of experiencing the world, and you're invited along for the ride. Legions of fans worldwide have joined forces to make Emily a pop-culture phenomenon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Equal parts Edward Gorey and MTV's Daria, Emily, an icon to the Hot Topic crowd, is a walking brew of teenage ennui filtered through a Halloweenish, macabre sensibility and tons of red and black ink. Now she conquers the comics with a collection of brief but mordant episodes. The first deals with Emily's extreme boredom and her failed attempts at defeating it, like stitching the head of a rooster onto the body of a kangaroo, creating, of course, the world's first kangarooster, or interviewing punk legends the Damned in a cemetery. In "The Lost Issue," she visits Oz only to find Ozzy Osbourne in the ruler's throne and loses herself in a warehouse store—Lostco—where the free food samples ("Goat Pockets," or tandoori lint) turn shoppers into zombies. Much of the pleasure comes from the writing team's acumen for pun-craft : "Lost in Space" is a veritable cauldron of semi-bad puns referencing everything from Super Mario Brothers and The Matrix to Alice in Wonderland. Visually, the book is a feast of shadow and Lovecraftian nastiness while remaining just a bit cute. Disaffected teens who have already embraced the Emily empire to their sorrowful bosoms should like this fine. (Nov.)
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From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up–With her sharp wit, dark clothing, and even darker attitude, Emily Strange is a Wednesday Addams for the goth-punk generation. This volume collects three issues–The Boring Issue, The Lost Issue, and The Dark Issue–of the comic book series published in 2005 and 2006. Not so much a graphic novel but a series of short strips and vignettes, it chronicles the brooding teen's constant battles against boredom. Whether it's through magic spells, macabre science experiments, or directing a movie about the birth of the world starring–who else–herself, her fight is a ghoulishly entertaining romp of imagination and wordplay. Most of the stories are entirely original, while some of the tales are clever parodies of classic fantasy stories like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, and the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Done by four different people across all the various story lines, the artwork runs the full range of techniques from hand-drawn to painted to computer illustration. Despite the differences, all achieve the same feel with a limited color palette of black and white–and the occasional red for things like blood or lipstick. The quality is a bit uneven from story to story, with some of the tales falling prey to cheap gags or one-liners that aren't as funny as they should be. But when it works, it works in a biting, pithy way that smart kids will appreciate.–Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (December 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593075731
• ISBN-13: 978-1593075736
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #632,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

13 things author Jessica Gruner wants you to know:

1. Jessica frequently has close encounters with hummingbirds. At times, she suspects she may be a hummingbird.

2. She wrote a book about rocks when she was like five or so. In it, she speculated that there might be more than one thousand rocks in the world. No, not types of rocks. Individual rocks.

3. She has two of the largest, funniest, snuggliest, most symmetrical cats on earth: a chubby tabby named Damo Jerusalem of Whitney and an all-white cat named Miles Lavender Chan-Chan of Cotton. Emily has a cat named after him . . . .

4. Jessica also has several pet chickens named after Battlestar Galactica characters.

5. Like Emily, Jessica is a chronic over-punctuator!!!!!!

6. Jessica has obsessive tendencies and is very thankful that they don't (currently) interfere with her life.

7. It's a shame that her obsessive tendencies don't involve obsessively cleaning the house. She lives in semi-pestilence until right before the guests arrive.

8. Jessica and Emily agree on good music (Black Sabbath, the Stooges, Miles Davis, the New York Dolls, Jimi Hendrix, the Cramps, the Misfits . . .) and bad music (Hoopy Jankers and the Goodtime Belly Bouncers).

9. Jessica thinks the best songs to sing at karaoke are "Urgent," "I Feel the Earth Move," "Brand New Key," and "Hell Bent for Leather."

10. The other books she's working on are about A) triplets and the end of the world, B) a snow planet, and C) an office building that has its own lymphatic system.

11. She taught high school English for four years in San Francisco.

12. And was the teacher most likely to be dressed all in black.

13. If Jessica had Emily's inventing skills, she'd already own the patent on duplication, invisibility, perpetual motion, time travel, and teleportation devices!!!! Bwuahh hahha hahhahhah!