Electric Girl - Did You Know Star Wars Was Close To Being Rated G?

I mention that in the headline to point out that stories designed to be enjoyed by a "general audience," do not always mean that they can only be enjoyed by a juvenile audience.

Star Wars managed to avoid the G rating by adding some charred corpses (in a scene directly lifted from the awesome Searchers by John Ford)...but Electric Girl does not add any sort of "gross for the sake of being gross" bit to the comic.

And yet, Electric Girl is still, like Star Wars, a story that can be enjoyed by young and old alike.

Electric Girl is about a girl named Virginia who was born with electric powers. Basically, her power is that she is surging with electricity. The name "Electric Girl" does not refer to any superhero name or anything like that, it's just what people call her. She is the "Electric Girl."

Her main supporting cast is her parents, her cute little dog, Blammo, her two closest girlfriends, and her (sigh) gremlin friend, Oogleeoog.

I really do not dig the gremlin character.

Gremlins, in the world of Electric Girl, are these invisible creatures who cause havoc on earth. Which is fine enough. But man...it is not that I dislike Oogleeoog, it is more that I really do not see his purpose in the stories. Yes, the writer has Oogleeoog as a "trouble magnet," to explain how all sorts of weird stuff always happens around Virginia...but really, would anyone complain if this weird stuff just happened to occur? I know I wouldn't. Not only that, but the stories in the book that are the best are the ones that DON'T include Oogleeoog. The strongest stories are the normal, character-driven ones. With those insults being said, Oogleeoog is not a bad character, and he can be funny sometimes...I just think the book would be stronger without him.

The creator, Michael Brennan, does a fine job on the art (a nice, clean cartoony style...although, once again, the biggest drawback I would say would be his drawings of Oogleeoog), but he really shines on dialogue and character intractions. The way Virginia and the interesting supporting cast interact is really solid stuff (Virginia and her parents, Virginia and her friends, Her friends amongst themselves). Often, the book really reads a lot like Blue Monday...that is, if something actually ever happened in Blue Monday(I kid Blue Monday because I care). There is a really fun story about a zombie who, well, doesn't act like a typical zombie. Funny stuff. And a really nice, character-driven piece about what happens on the first really humid day of the year.

There IS one story that is a bit...well, out of place...where Oogleeoog tries to save Virginia (in a flashback story) from a child molester without breaking his oath to never directly assist a human. It is a fine story seeing Oogleeoog trying to aid Virginia without doing so directly, but dude, it is a CHILD MOLESTER! That's a bit too creepy to use as the centerpiece of a "will the gremlin break his oath and use his powers to help a human?" story, ya know?

The stories in Electric Girl read a lot like an Archie digest, in that they are a bunch of stories, of varying lengths. In addition, like Archie digests, there are a few "Lil' Virginia" flashback stories (like the child molester one, but also more normal ones, like when Virginia got Blammo). You can really tell that these characters were designed first for a comic strip, because that sense of storytelling really comes across. Like the Archie characters, these characters work well either way.

The cover design for the first trade is TERRIBLY unappealing. In fact, if I were to direct someone to find it, I think I would say, "Just look for the trade with the goddawful cover, and you'll find it!" Look at the cover here.

In any event, it definitely is a fun comic, and one I would recommend highly, especially if you enjoy Bleu Monday...as, it is very similar, except, like I said before, with stuff actually happening.