Customer Reviews

Strange Girl Vol 1: Girl Afraid

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Strange Girl starts out looking like it will be about the life of a young girl who is the black sheep of her very religious family. Young Bethany Black does not have the faith that her parents and brother have, and it seems that this series will look at how life can be for someone who doesn't believe when they are forced to have faith. Wrong. After about 4 pages, the rapture occurs, and Bethany's family, along with anyone else who is "righteous", ascend to Heaven leaving Bethany and the other undeserving people behind. God then declares that he is no longer offering Earth his protection, which allows Satan and his demons to rise from the Earth and take over.
Ten years later, Beth is grown up and is a slave of the demon Lord Belial. She has won the demon over due to the fact that she has taught herself magic, and can use protect spells (among others) to keep herself safe in a world full of viscious demons. Although she has a much better life than many humans, most of whom were either killed during the first days after the rapture or are now used as sex slaves, Beth's life is hardly ideal. She works in one of Belial's bars in San Francisco alongside Bloato, a demon who is loyal to her for unknown reasons. When Bloato tells Bethany that there is one gate left on Earth that can get her to Heaven, the pair escape to try to get to Vatican City in order to save themselves.
Strange Girl is characterized by intense action scenes as well as moments of philisophical thought about religion. The book can go from over-the-top action to intelligent conversation pretty quickly. The characters are also well-written and developed; Beth didn't get into Heaven not because she's a bad person, but because she has no faith. She loves her family, but they still were difficult to live with. Bloato's speech pattern and attitude are very amusing, and Belial's role of a bizarre father figure is an interesting twist on the idea of demons.
This book will probably be a little offensive to many people, but it is still worth taking a look at. It's an interesting look at the people who aren't righteous, and is hilarious as well.

I read the premise for Strange Girl and immediately felt my panties gather in a bunch. It sounded seriously cool: a girl, the black sheep of her religious family, is left behind when the Rapture turns out to be only too real and the World is given over to Satan and his minions. Flash forward ten years and Beth is now a bartender and a slave to a big shot demon in post-apocalyptic New York. After a misunderstanding escalates she and a demonic sidekick flee to find the last backdoor to Heaven.

So far so good but then I got the comic...and that's where the hijinks ended and my pain began. The story is told in an incredibly rushed version. Instead of taking its time to establish the characters we meet Beth's family and in a page later they're gone to Paradise. Another page later Beth is already grown up.

We see nothing of her survival. Nothing of what she went through. Nothing of what the world went through.

I felt like the writers were afraid their series would get cancelled so they wanted to tell their story as fast as possible which is a shame because the work definetely suffered.

And the art...my god what can I say about the art? Comic books are an unusual medium because the writing is only half the equation...the visual aspect has to be just as good. Unfortunately Strange Girl has some of the worst at I've seen in a comic. Seriously. No care for human anatomy is taken. Backgrounds seem barely sketched. All humans look the same. I mean seriously they could not get a PROFESSIONAL to illustrate this story?? Marvel filler issues have better artists than Strange Girl does.

It was such a letdown because if any graphic novel deserves a great artist it's Strange Girl: ravaged cities, demons and devil of all shapes and hues walking around, magic, etc. Instead we get a bunch of doodles colored in my Photoshop.

While I do recommend Strange Girl for its imaginative storyline I urge you to not get your hopes up: its rushed storytelling make it average and its subpar art makes it below average.

Strange Girl has a great premise, life after the rapture. The good people (including the heroine's parents) have gone to heaven and demons from hell has enslaved the rest.

The problems are a stylized art that makes it hard to follow the action, typos ('we all have a roll to play' instead of role, 'thrown' instead of throne), and a series of highly contrived situations to explain how a teen girl survives in this world.

That being said Rick Remender clearly has a direction and has certainly set up an interesing world and I'm willing to give volume 2 a try.

This is a very cool storyline, and the dialog is smart and peppy. My only complaint is that the art can sometimes be practically decipherable. 4 stars.

While I found the art work aceptable the story line was a little to far out for my tastes.