What is American youth? It’s Jack Kerouac, and the City Lights Bookstore. It’s Good Morning Vietnam, and hope for the outcasts. It’s nightmares and tight blue jeans; loud music and sweat and out past curfew. It’s the invention of the new normal, and the raw power of possibility, and the ache of realizing limits. It’s hairspray, and shoes you don’t know how to walk in. It’s Andy Warhol, James Dean, and Marlon Brando’s white t-shirt. It’s soda pop, street drugs, and birth control. It’s railing against the imaginings of happiness our parents’ created. It’s irony, apathy, empathy and escapism. It’s the hood of a car beneath the stars and liquor from a paper cup. It’s “The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.”
Written by Gerard Way & Shaun Simon
Illustrated by Becky Cloonan“The pulse is beating like a cheetah on speed!”
No longer content to hide from the prying eyes and lies of BLI, the Girl tries her hand at learning how to fire a ray gun with the help of a former Killjoy, Cherri Cola. But when her vision bends and her mind opens, will the Girl see beyond sight and view more than she can handle? How far can you see when you lose focus?
In this series, Way and Simon have created a unique tone, which brings a power to the subject matter that cannot be denied. The effect of this comprehensive commitment to tone within the pages of this issue is at once unsettling and nostalgic. Bubbling with sarcasm and irreverence, the story’s voice is a pitch-perfect recreation of the chaos of adolescence and young adulthood. Ridden with angst and purposefully unsure of itself, this series’ voice allows the audience to feel their growing pains all over again.
Focusing on youthful rebellion and the struggle for autonomy, “The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys” is a coming of age story to be reckoned with. Way and Simon pen dialogue and narration that are both naive and full of bravado. The challenges facing the characters in this series are real; the stakes are high, their worries really are life or death matters. This means that the common ways in which young people dramatize and mythologize their troubles, seem not only warranted, but necessary within the context of this series.
In the third issue of this series, the creative team explores the way in which the struggle for identity has become synonymous with the struggle for escape. Blue, a porno droid, searches for a way to save her friend and fellow automaton, Red. An outdated model, Red is condemned to be recycled by the authority of the city; causing Blue to lose faith in the established protocol of Battery City, leading her to rebel and take matters into her own hands. Scarecrow Korse begins to question his role as a cog in the great Machine of Battery City, searching for meaning in the tasks he is told to carry out. Cherri Cola, a former Killjoy, finds his escape and identity by giving a voice to the struggle. By broadcasting over the radio waves he hides in plain sight, and continues the work of survival. For The Girl, the search for identity and escape lead to a makeover. Each story within this issue is a variation on a theme asking the question: what does it mean to be free, and why does it matter? In order to answer that, the characters must come to understand not only why freedom is worth fighting for, but why they are worthy of having it.
Just as the tone of the series functions as a powerful tool, so too does the setting. Raging against the comprehensive authority that is Battery City itself, the characters fight for their place in the world and a meaningful existence. The stark contrast between the clean minimal interiors within the city limits and the shantytown feeling of the desert creates a dialogue about what is valuable. While the rhetoric of the controlling powers within Battery City stipulates that one can, and should for that matter, buy happiness; the young people living in the desert find moments of bliss bathing in the light of the sun, or discovering a tube of lipstick. Moments like this illustrate that the idea of contentment is relative.
Continued belowCloonan’s art echoes the youthful quality of the writing. Scant, precise lines leave the faces of the characters open canvases for emotion, which she captures with an expert clarity. Animated and kinetic, the dynamic renderings she contributes to this story are powerful conduits of storytelling. Somehow, in her hands reading this series feels a little like watching “Pop-Up Video.” She creates a world set to the pulsing music of human noise in which the words on screen serve to direct attention, while the visuals are familiar and full of intention.
“The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys” works in layers. At it’s core is a purposeful tone, embodying the experience of leaving childhood behind. Just outside of that, the setting offers a canvas for that voice to come to life. The experiences of the characters form the next layer, drawing themes into focus. Binding all that together are the visual elements of the story, which allow us to peer through the window of this world. The pieces come together to form something innovative and exuberant, unique and worthwhile.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – “The Breakfast Club” meets “Mad Max”… what’s not to love?
