Geek-Girl #1-4

I was invited by Sam Johnson, the UK-based writer and creator of the character of Geek-Girl, to review the book and give you my thoughts before the release of the first collected volume of the character is made available this Friday, August 25th. There are plenty of preview pages to check out on their website here, so I had a look through to get an idea of the character over these 4 introductory issues. I am a big indie comic fan, so I tend to give them more leeway than offerings from the big publishers who often have a lot more resources, and have a creative team that are building the book as their full-time job. With Geek-Girl, however, no such leeway was needed.

The book revolves around Ruby Kaye, a popular 'It girl' college student in Maine who wins a pair of high-tech glasses in a game of strip poker. Unlikely? So is being bitten by a radioactive spider, and that's not nearly as fun. She finds that the glasses give her superhuman abilities, and she is stuck trying to figure out just what they can let her (or make her) do. Her best friend Summer, destined to drop into the 'girl in the chair' role for Ruby, suggests that she should use the glasses to help people, and so Geek-Girl is born. When her city's main crime-fighting heroes are put out of commission by a powerful new super-villain, Geek-Girl finds herself trying to balance college life and figuring out the extent of her powers with her new role as the only thing standing in the way of the Big Bads of her city.

Can we take a moment to appreciate that they tucked her phone into her boot? Where's yours, Spider-Man? Actually, don't answer that

In short, think Kick-Ass meets Spider-Man meets Mean Girls and you've got it. Johnson does a great job of getting you to care about the character quickly, and the situations that the book presents explain themselves well without spelling everything out to you. It isn't difficult - put a character in a situation where they are outside of their comfort zone, have a struggle to get over, and make it clear that they are on a journey to become the finished article, and most people will sit down and read it. He keeps it simple and straightforward and lets you get on with enjoying the book, which is great and very sensible when you are writing a comic without a long-established universe to go around it. That said the story isn't simplistic, there are plenty of chances for you to empathise with the main character and get a sense of the enormity of the struggle she faces, and the story is told from her point of view as much as possible, which draws you into the figuring-things-out side of the plot, as most of the time you only know as much as Geek-Girl does.

Realistic depiction of college life is realistic

I have to talk about the art, because it's great. I mean, it's really great, it belies this book's origins as an indie comic and the pages are better than quite a few Marvel books I read. The pencils from Carlos Granda and the colours from Chunlin Zhao are really beautiful, classic comic artwork with a hint of Saturday morning cartoon in its style. It really brings this book to a higher level and caught me unawares, if indie comics can turn out this standard of art then it is time for some of the big publishers to raise their game. My one quibble would be that some of the covers need to pop a bit more in their composition and subject, they feel like another scene from the inside of the book and a good comic book cover has more of a poster-like feel to it, in my opinion. Some of the variant covers are very cool, though.

Oh he looks friendly

I will be checking out the first 4 issues in full, and I urge you to do the same. This is a fun, engaging comic with a great idea behind it and great art to take you through the story.

4 / 5 

You can pre-order the collected Geek-Girl 1-4 here, or any individual issues here. You can also like the Geek-Girl Facebook page, or follow Geek-Girl herself on Twitter.