Geek Girl #0 is a 16-page b&w comic book, written by Sam Johnson, with artwork by Sally Thompson. The comic is released through Fanbabes, and is a prelude to an upcoming four issue miniseries.

The Story

Geek-Girl tells the story of a girl called Ruby Kaye (no relation), who is an incredibly pretty, and popular high school girl, that is one day granted superpowers. Ruby gets her powers from a pair of super-tech glasses, which were invented by “brainiac college geek” Trevor Goldstein, who Ruby won them of in a game of Strip Poker. However, there’s a catch to the super-glasses, because while they grant her flight, super-strength, and a ton of other superpowers, due to a flaw in the glasses’ programming they also curse her with super-klutziness. That’s not even the worst thing though, because the glasses are also incredibly unfashionable, which doesn’t do Ruby’s image any good at all!

Will Ruby give up her it-girl lifestyle in exchange for superpowers and a geeky pair of glasses?

The Rating

Geek-Girl is a fun read, with a few really good jokes. I quite enjoy the reverse-Superman aspect of Ruby’s powers, in that Clark Kent is a klutz with glasses, who takes them off and becomes a good-looking guy with superpowers, whereas Ruby Kaye is a sexy girl until she puts the glasses on, at which time she become a klutz with superpowers. It’s a decent joke, but is it enough to base a series on? Well, unfortunately, it’s hard to tell from just this 16-page preview, because we only get a small glimpse of Ruby in action, and most of the issue involves her discovery of the superglasees, and her conning them off of their creator. The way she wins the glasses is a little contrived, but still pretty funny, I mean, you can kind of image a horny geek giving up his greatest invention just for the chance of seeing a glimpse of boob in a strip poker game.

The problem with Geek-Girl, is that I’m not sure what audience it is aimed at. From the name and cover, you’d think that it was aimed at geeky girls, possibly in their teens, but I really don’t the writing is aimed at the same demographic. Some of the dialogue is a bit risqué, for example, there is a scene where two girls are talking about one of their boyfriends asking her to let him do something to her, and the girl said that she’d only do it for a down payment on a car, then the other girls asks if she said yes, to which the first girl replies, “well, I’m the only one here not sitting down”.  OK, it doesn’t say it by name, but they are clearly talking about anal sex, and the girl is basically accepting money for sex. I’m not going to get into whether such jokes are appropriate, but it’s clearly aimed at a more mature audience. However, will a more mature audience care abut the adventures of a clumsy teenage heroine? I’m really not sure. Therein lies the problem.

The artwork on the book is decent, but nothing really special. The linework isn’t bad, pretty basic, and rough in spots, but definitely serviceable. It could really do with a better inking job though, I think that would go a long way towards giving the artwork more depth. I’d also recommend a greater range of facial expressions for the characters, because they only seem to have two expressions (frown or a smile), and have no lip movement beyond those two basis positions, even while talking.

Geek-Girl #0 isn’t a bad book, and the idea has a lot of potential, but the comic really needs to pick an audience, and figure out what makes them tick. If it wants to play to a teenage girl audience, it needs to dial down the sexual inappropriateness, and perhaps be a little less derogatory towards women; however, if it wants to aim to a more adult audience, it really needs to be a bit more extreme, perhaps something like a teenage version of The Pro by Garth Ennis and Amanda Conner - I could see that working!!

Like I said through, it’s really hard to get a sense of a story from only 16 pages, so I may be way off the mark here, and the four-issue miniseries may be a completely different beast. If you’d like to check out this #0 issue of the comic, you can pick a copy up for the low price of $1.99 by heading to www.geekgirlcomic.com, or  IndyPlanet.com

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