Hellishly hilarious.
High school in Hell? Not so different from high school anywhere else.
Playing his premise for all it's worth, Guarente fills the halls of St. Lucifer’s Academy for the Hopeless and Damned with heavy-lidded teen dead and demons. There, the former serve as lab subjects in dissection class, are forced to watch sex-ed films featuring their own parents and otherwise endure like high-pain activities. For Trevor, the thick protective shells of ennui and self-loathing that he brought with him after being electrocuted by a crappy guitar amp begin to break down when slavering vice principal Cerberus promises a transfer to Purgatory if he can pull his “soul point average” up past 3.0 (it’s currently negative 2.8 billion). But then leaving starts to look less attractive when hot new goth student Persephone Plumm shows signs of interest. That interest leads to a clinch after Trevor crashes the school’s angst rally to play a “neo thrash core” ballad…but the course of true love is unlikely to run smooth, as Persephone has yet to share some significant information about her parentage. Being replete with disfigured students, terrifying monsters and scenes of gruesomely explicit torture, the art is as much fun as the broadly tweaked school-story tropes. (Said art is supplied by a rotating team, leading to some visual discontinuity from section to section.)
Hellishly hilarious. (Graphic fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62873-592-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
A bridge between paranormals and boys' realism about thugs and delinquents, reminiscent of Neal Shusterman's Dark Fusion:...
How many metaphors can one werewolf embody?
In the case of incipient teen wolf Brock, it's an easy two. His lycanthropy, held temporarily at bay by medication, makes his facial hair grow "so much faster than it did before," keeps him hungry although he just "had two roast beef sandwiches and an apple turnover shake" and forces him to fantasize about his ex-girlfriend, Cyn, who "drives [him] wild." In other words, he's a teenage boy. Meanwhile, parallels are continually drawn between the racism practiced against werewolves and humans; the same sheriff who tells a werewolf mother, "I should put a bullet in your brain right now and spare myself the paperwork," begins the novel by pulling Cyn over for Driving While Latina. Amid all this metaphor, there manages to be plot—Brock, previously vilely racist against Others, now has to come to terms with his new identity while fleeing the bigoted lawman. Despite Brock's infantile behavior, the werewolf pack feels responsibility for having turned him (though the original bite was an act of self-defense). Unless he can overcome his own self-loathing and guilt, Brock will wind up dead, maybe bringing Cyn with him.
A bridge between paranormals and boys' realism about thugs and delinquents, reminiscent of Neal Shusterman's Dark Fusion: Red Rider's Hood (2005) . (Paranormal. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7387-1920-7
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Flux
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
Hip, steamy fun.
A small-town teen fond of taking on difficult boyfriends as "projects" acquires a taste for tougher challenges when her newest one turns into a giant bat.
"Vampires are like cockroaches. If you see one, you've got a few. If you see a few, you've got a lot." So explains Vanessa's mysterious but hunky new squeeze Jean-Paul after blowing his cover as a janitor by driving off an attacking band of preppy bloodsuckers—and then revealing that Vanessa herself is descended from a line of monster hunters, and he has been appointed her protector. Rescuing a beloved teacher from exsanguination (armed with industrial quantities of garlic powder and a shop-vac) not only proves the truth of Jean-Paul's observation but firms up Vanessa's vague career plans, too. Presented in graphic panels done in suitably gothic black and white and featuring both sharply drawn characters and plenty of snarky dialogue, this spirited standalone episode joins both its predecessors (I Love Him to Pieces and Made for Each Other) and the simultaneously publishing Under His Spell, by Marie P. Croall and illustrated by Hyeondo Park, as fine fare for Buffy fans of all...types.
Hip, steamy fun. (Graphic paranormal romance. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7613-7078-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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