Writer: Rashida Jones, Christina Weir, Nunzio DeFilippis
Artist: Jeff Wamester
Format: Standard, Full Color
Page Count: 32
Price: $3.99
Genre: Comedy/Action
Age Rating: T+ — Older Audiences
UPC: 64985600030900111
Target Audience: Fans of high action comedy adventures.
Comparison Titles: Comics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. TV Shows like Alias and Chuck.
Solicit Text: An all-new series from the star of NBC’s PARKS & RECREATION and veteran comic scribes DeFilippis & Weir! Ariana Von Holmberg is an heiress with a secret. But what she’s hiding isn’t a sex tape or a drug addiction or an affair with a professional golfer–it’s a new career as a CIA operative! What better cover for an agent than a globe-trotting, care-free femme with a penchant for flights of fancy? But can Ari balance her high society obligations with her new role as a spy or will the weight of two worlds bring her dual lives to a violent end?
Well, well, well. What do we have here? A brand new comic written by Rashida Jones? When this arrived in my inbox, I was very confused. You see, I didn’t know Rashida Jones had any interest in comics, let alone had written one for Oni. My research has come to find out that Jones is actually working on a movie called Frenemy of the State, so I’m already beginning to get an inkling of what I theoretically could expect for this comic.
However, Jones is a funny lady, and she’s not alone in writing it. Plus, the title compares itself to Buffy and Chuck. I LOVE high action comedy adventures! So what did I think of Frenemy of the State? Find out after the jump.
If there’s one thing that I have been noticing lately in independent comics as a trend is the high referential system of mainstream media and the digital obsession of the American culture. For example, Image has a mini coming out now called Forgetless that was pitched to me as the hipster replacement to Phonogram, yet it’s a comic that I can’t stand due to it’s over using of things like Twitter and Flickr and YouTube in decidedly non-ironic ways. Then we have a comic like Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape, which has an over usage of Twitter, yet it’s done in an ironic way to obviously make a statement on the effect this type of thing has on the youths of today.
Yet – I still prefer my digital uses and my comic readings separate, and more often than not I groan when I open a new comic and find something like that in there. So when Frenemy of the State opened with a parody of Perez Hilton and Twitter, I couldn’t help but groan.
The phrase “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” comes to mind, though. I suppose in this case it would be “don’t just a comic by it’s first two pages.” Because despite this somewhat tacky opening, Frenemy of the State ends up being a rather funny and entertaining story that really is like something I’d expect from a Buffy or Chuck type show/comic.
Now, I obviously can not discern who wrote what within the comic. What I can say, however, is that the writing team does work very well. The story reads very well from beginning to end, and it’s a good mix of comedy and action to the point where I can already hear the soundtrack to the movie in my head (and it honestly sounds a lot like the soundtrack to Chuck). The main character of the book is endearing, and I can to a certain extent see Rashida Jones as the character – although Karen from the Office suddenly becoming a wealthy socialite is an odd transformation in my mind. The art in the book is also really good for it, and it fits in very tonally with the story – slightly cartoonish yet still good for some nice comic book style action.
There’s only one aspect of the book that I found odd, and that was the “origin story.” While I appreciate the humor in it, part of me just has a bit of a hard time getting into the idea that in today’s culture, there really is any person who can take a partial class on any subject and somehow be amazing at it. Our heroine is an expert hacker, but it seems slightly improbable to me that someone who was born into riches and dropped out of college could really be a great hacker. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just improbable. That and the item she is sent to retrieve. I was expecting some epic list of drug contacts and dirty money laundering, but hey, I suppose there in lies the fun of the twist. We’ll see how this plays out in future issues.
The book makes me laugh though, and most importantly it makes me want to see what’s coming next, and ultimately this is what you want from a first issue. Frenemy of the State makes for a fun new series with a femme fatale worth watching, and I look forward to seeing how the series progresses beyond this issue.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – Buy
