Bin Fodder: Girls – vol. 1 “Conception”

Back in February I reviewed the Luna Brothers book, Ultra – Seven Days.  It’s a solid story with really good digital art.  I had been impressed with the Luna Brothers’ work and so I decided to pick up another one of their books.  This time I decided on Girls – vol. 1 Conception, which collects the first six issues of the series.

 

Once again I was impressed with the art.  There are a lot of comic book readers who are snobs and think inaccurate things.  They think that if you don’t have calluses on your fingers or spend sixty hours a week leaning over a drafting table that you’re not a true artist.  I am not one of these people.  Technology is here to stay.  Deal with it.  The Luna Brothers do a fantastic job with setting tone and creating believable settings to allow the unbelievable to occur in.

 

That being said, I have to admit I was unimpressed with the story in Girls.  A lot of what occurred in the first six issues was confusing and overall pretty nonsensical.  Granted, it was a twenty-four issue series and they don’t want to tip their hand too early.  But, having read the first six issues, I have no desire to read the rest of it.

 

The story takes place in the small out-of-the-way town of Pennystown, population 65.  An “event” occurs in the first issue, and as it is explained later, this event spawns a woman…randomly, naked in a cornfield just outside of town.  She is, of course, discovered there by a hillbilly.  If you haven’t seen Deliverance then you may not have a full appreciation of the kind of hillbilly I’m talking about, so you should run out and watch it.

 

The event causes every window in town, every-single-one, including windshields, to shatter.  Ok, here’s where the Luna Brothers first lose me.  Because, nobody seems to think this is a big deal.  They just want to blame it on the thunder that happened (the “event” is considered thunder by some of the townsfolk).   Not one of the characters brings up the fact that all the windows are broken.  The sheriff mentions “some windows got busted up” but car windshields don’t just break because of thunder.

 

But the part where they really lose me is, when a group of men venture out into the cornfield in an attempt to discover some truth to what is going on, they discover…wait for it…a giant sperm.

 

Yeah, you read that right.

 

And not only do they discover a giant sperm, but it’s sentient, because it uses its tail to kill two of the men.  I really wish I was joking, but I’m not.

 

When the remaining men return to town the sheriff decides, finally, to evacuate the town.  All twelve cars jump on the road and head out, but stop short as they reach the bridge across the river and discover the car of another member of town who had left the previous day.  The car has a crushed front end and both passengers are dead.  There’s no other car…so what happened?

 

It hit an invisible wall that’s now surrounding the town.

 

This, combined with the magic naked women who grow overnight out of eggs and try to kill all the women they come in contact with, is truly too much for even my science-fiction loving mind to take.  I will accept a lot of things and I am often drawn to books that are off-beat and a little strange.  But this one is just, dare I say it…dumb.  It seems like the Luna Brothers really just wanted an excuse to draw as many naked women on pages as possible and needed to concoct a story to justify it.  Well, it was a failure.

 

Girls gets a D grade from me.  The only thing that keeps it from an F is the fact that the art is solid in style if not substance.

 

Check back next week when I review a GOOD BOOK, I promise.

 

For now…

 

This is your Bin Fodder Guru Tim Blacksmith signing off.

 

Playlist: Band of Horses – “Is There a Ghost”,  Moments in Grace – “No Angels”,  Moments in Grace – “My Dying Day”,  +44 – “Make You Smile”TOOL – “10,000 Days”Ben Folds – “The Luckiest”Midtown – “Knew it all Along” (Acoustic),  Less Than Jake – “The life of the Party Has Left the Building”,  Exit – “When I’m Free”

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