Spoiler alert: I adored this book with every fiber of my being.
Written by Prudence Shen
Illustrated by Faith Erin HicksYou wouldn’t expect Nate and Charlie to be friends. Charlie’s the laid-back captain of the basketball team, and Nate is the neurotic, scheming president of the robotics club. But they are friends, however unlikely—until Nate declares war on the cheerleaders. At stake is funding that will either cover a robotics competition or new cheerleading uniforms—but not both.
It’s only going to get worse: after both parties are stripped of their funding on grounds of abominable misbehavior, Nate enrolls the club’s robot in a battlebot competition in a desperate bid for prize money. Bad sportsmanship? Sure. Chainsaws? Why not. Running away from home on Thanksgiving to illicitly enter a televised robot death match? Of course!
In Faith Erin Hicks’ and Prudence Shen’s world of high school class warfare and robot death matches, Nothing can possibly go wrong.
Do you remember where you were when you first fell in love? A lot of people do, but in this instance, I know the exact moment when I fell in love with “Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong.”
Now, let’s be honest, this book from writer Prudence Shen and artist Faith Erin Hicks is just filled with lovable moments. Granted, coming from a writer whose character work is so spot on and relatable and an artist whose characters radiate with life and heart, it’s pretty hard for those moments not to come around all of the time.
That’s just one moment which, out of context, doesn’t seem like much, but it speaks volumes of the exceptional work these two creators crafted in this book. It’s a moment that made these two disparate characters feel like real friends, and for once, like the strangely similar creatures they always were from the start.
When you boil it down to what it is – a high school story told with all kinds of hijinks thrown in – it doesn’t sound like its really discovering any new ground. But with some nice little remixes thrown in the formula (the driving force of the book is a semi-maniacal co-lead who desperately wants to make it to a robotics competition, and he has to defeat the evil cheerleaders to get there, for example), this is a book that has just enough of a foundation to let what really matters thrive: the characters.
In particular, the two leads and the main female character are particularly enjoyable, as Shen imbues them all with enough gravitas (well, in two of them at least) that they never become caricatures, but thrive as fully realized people. In Charlie, Nate and Joanna, Shen takes three archetypes – the jock, the nerd and the cute nerdy girl – and makes them feel much more than just that while resisting the urge to fall into stereotypes. For example, from the start I was pulling for Charlie and Joanna to get together, but Shen never makes this book about that. It’s a feature, and it is a pitfall that many stories would become enveloped by, but she makes it an element that looms and in the process creates even more investment in these two warm hearted and complex characters.
And it helps a lot that she writes some damn zippy dialogue that pops and brings a smile to your face while you’re reading it. The character interactions, particularly in scenes like the one that made me fall in love with the book, are brought to life with nuanced yet fun feeling dialogue.
That’s another great part of this book: it’s just fun. I read it in one sitting, and I just smiled the whole time. It helps a lot that Hicks is the artist, as she is someone who could probably make a comic adaptation of Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia” feel like the good time you’ve just been waiting to have.
Fitting into Shen’s strengths, Hicks is an exceptionally gifted character artist. Her characters are warm and expressive, and invite you in to just enjoy them more and more. In particular, I love the way she worked with Charlie, the main lead. Hicks is an artist whose style is seen to have manga influence, and that comes with the occasional cartoony, over the top reactions to situations. Yet with Charlie, she works with him in very subtle ways, especially when dealing with his family. His facial expressions and mannerisms feel restrained, and even muted, and its a brilliant bridge she creates to Shen’s words and character beats as to how he feels about his family and the situation he’s in.
Continued belowAnd then, when we get to the end which features – spoiler alert!!! – a Battle Bots style robot fighting competition, Hicks kicks ass at that too, adding a ton of energy and power to the action sequences (and when Charlie takes out some tough guy nerds before their match). She’s a versatile artist who really brings the total package to a project, and perhaps more than anything, her work makes me happy.
It’s weird. I feel like I should come up with something more clever and technical about this book, but it really boils down to one simple thing: Shen and Hicks have created a comic that makes me genuinely happy. Something I immediately finished and thought, “who should I share this with first?” It’s a book that is filled to the brim with awesome by two tremendously gifted storytellers, and something I think anyone would – and should – enjoy.
Final Verdict: 9.8 – Buy (or at the very least, read online!)
