Miles is skipping school to buy the new Cure CD. He was supposed to go with best friend Sarah, but she’s had less time and attention for him lately. Instead, he heads off by himself only to meet Anna, on the same errand.
Anna’s the perfect outsider angel. In miniskirt, fishnets, and heavy boots, she breaks Miles out of his self-centered shell — joking and flirting with him, explaining things about himself to him, and sharing his secret places. It’s clearly his story, with his emotions serving as the focal point, and we’ve seen her type of character before, the first love who inspires the man inside the boy.
The creators describe the book as “a teenage love story … for the person you once were… the sixteen year old that fell in love at first sight and took themselves all too seriously.” It’s a good summary. These lonely, disaffected kids have the wonder of finding a new world through each other. Their magical day will be a life-changing experience, if only in the memory, while the more experienced reader realizes how universal their experiences are.
Gill’s thick line gives the characters weight, yet they’re strangely flat. Her art is loose and wavy around the edges, well-suited to a story about teens who are also existing on the edge. I would have liked a little better lettering, though — the frequently missing periods and commas made the dialogue sometimes hard to read.
I know little about the band that serves as the central macguffin, but the emotions are so understandable that it didn’t matter. I suspect that if I’d known the songs whose lyrics were used, they’d contribute additional depth to the scenes they feature in.
Following in the mold of Hurd’s My Uncle Jeff, this is a well-observed encounter that feels inspired by real life. At 48 pages, this graphic novella is just the right length for the story of a day’s friendship. It’s oddly old-fashioned, pulling the curtain and leaving us to draw our own conclusions at the end.
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