SPACE TRASH

A group of teenage girls tries to survive in a neglected high school on the moon.

In this future world, the prevailing narrative is that Earth was clearly becoming uninhabitable by the year 2091. Having terraformed Mars and the moon, however, humans still persist. Hypatia Secondary School is a run-down, graffiti-covered high school on the moon that best friends Yuki Goro, Agatha “Stab” Cleary, and Una Nichols attend. Yuki, a champion wrestler, dreams of forming a girl gang as formidable as the urban legends the Trash Queens. Meanwhile, Agatha must get through the detention she’s received as a consequence for dozing off in her robot-instructed class, and Una is sneaking time on one of the school computers for reasons that remain unspecified. Life at Hypatia has its quirks, but it’s mostly predictable—that is, until a rival girl gang violates the trio’s hangout spot and steals their things. From there, discoveries are made that will change the friends’ trajectories forever. Woodall’s knack for snappy dialogue and colorful palettes make this first volume a treat, though it feels more like a setup than a solid entry on its own. Characters with a range of skin colors, body types, and sexualities populate the main cast and background characters.

This series opener is an intriguing introduction to a new science-fiction world.