Clubbing By Andi Watson

And felt the book was a loving send up of a certain precocious overprivileged set that I m oddly pleased to see cast as protagonist instead of 2 dimensional antagonist I m not sure how to write that in a way that makes sense But basically I liked Lottie s flash goth hyper femininity and how that s part of her personality and that s okay I liked seeing her baking for the Women s Institute I liked seeing her interact with her gran and look forward to befriending another woman based on the fact that she knows how to apply eyeliner These were all positives for me. Also this book contains some Coleridge A Where it lost my interest was the sped up super supernatural resolution and how pat and emotionless it was The bits I loved most in this book were when Lottie was really thinking or feeling when something was clearly penetrating her supercilious behaviour and forcing her to acknowledge something real When she received those bangles as a gift.

Andrew Andi Watson born 1969 is a British cartoonist and illustrator best known for the graphic novels Breakfast After Noon Slow News Day and his series Love Fights published by Oni Press and Slave Labor Graphics. Watson has also worked for mainstream American comic publishers with some work at DC Comics a twelve issue limited series at Marvel Comics with the majority at Dark Horse Comics moving recently to Image Comics Andrew Andi Watson born 1969 is a British cartoonist and illustrator best known for the graphic novels Breakfast After Noon Slow News Day and his series Love Fights published by Oni Press and Slave Labor Graphics. Watson has also worked for mainstream American comic publishers with some work at DC Comics a twelve issue limited series at Marvel Comics with the majority at Dark Horse Comics moving recently to Image Comics site_link A spoiled rebellious London girl takes on the stuffy English countryside in Clubbing The crime getting caught with a fake I. D at a posh London nightclub The punishment spending the summer at her Grandparent s stuffy country club But Charlotte Lottie Brook best known for her mile high platforms a bottomless itunes account and an unbridled passion for classic lit will end up doing than just serving time in country boot camp In between avoiding the strange locals and cake decorating contests Lottie will narrowly escape romance and end up solving a murder mystery on the 19th hole of her Grandparent s golf course ClubbingInteresting graphic novel involving some murder some mystery a touch of romance and a lot of golf The illustrations were cute and I really liked the way the goth chick was drawn nearly like Gloomcookie English Oh I dearly wanted to love this The writer Andi Watson is a friend and let me just say the person who says he should be shot in her review is lucky she s not saying that around me god I hate the kind of unthinking hyperbole the Internet has created and I m eic at a publisher that has published many of his comics And I have to say I really did enjoy the writing in the beginning of the book I thought it was going to be the story of a goth girl from London getting into some trouble and then getting sent down as they called it in Regency England to gain some perspective in the country and hey what do you know solving a local mystery while she s there In so doing she would learn that not everyone has to conform to her code of cool to be worth knowing and she would return to London a broad minded girl No one but Andi could write a story like this and make it work well I thought about halfway through the book. And then it took this bizarre supernatural turn at the end Lottie s friend being named Howard Philips should have been a clue to me and a horrible truth is revealed with equally horrible and depressing consequences Holy crap I thought If I found out horrifying truth about much loved member of family not to be specified here I would be devastated And then Lottie kind of shrugs if off and says Oh hey I m going to Japan where things are really cool and I m sitting in the bathtub with the book in my hands kind of stunned and What the hell feeling. Well I love Andi and his work but I guess we can t love everything about everyone But really I can feel what kind of book this could have been and my heart aches for it That version of the book would have had to be drawn by Andi too because as much as I wanted to give Josh Howard a chance I really did not like his art Lottie looks like a Bratz doll over sexualized and in ridiculous clothes even for a city goth tiny tiny skirts and stripper boots Howard made a name for himself by drawing cute girls for a young male audience and he doesn t seem to understand that is not the audience for this book Plus his draftsmanship is questionable He seems to have only one cute chick head only the hair is different And Lottie s head seems to keep changing size and her mouth moves around on her face a lot. Plus what s with that top photo on the cover Who are these blond girls in jeans They have nothing to do with anything as far as I can tell If they had shown some goth girls in what appears to be in a goth club that would have worked But they must have had only one picture of a club in the stock photo site Minx uses and who needs a cover photo that has anything to do with the book right Gosh this has gotten kind of silly on my part It s just that well you know how it is when you really look forward to something and want to love it and you re let down Fortunately Andi has a library of other books that I do love so my heart s not broken English I picked this up on a whim at the library maybe I missed having a thing for goth chicks when I was a teenager Anyway Clubbing was one of DC Comics ill fated Minx imprint a line of alternative graphic novels targeted at girls which got cancelled after a couple of years because their marketing sucked and the market for graphic novels in general particularly girl friendly ones just wasn t that good. The clubbing is a pun as Charlotte Lottie Brook is a spoiled privileged London teenager used to going out clubbing with fake IDs until she s caught and gets sent to stay the summer with her grandparents at their golf country club in the country where she tries to go hiking through cow pastures in 300 platform boots. Lottie was amusing of course she comes in with the cliched snotty big city rich girl all prepared to look down at the bucolic yokels attitude but underneath her affectations and her privilege she s not a bad girl and she actually likes her grandparents even while displaying the expected teen dismay at OMG having to hang out with grandparents She s smart but not very wise makes dumb and believable mistakes for a teenager she s kind of cute and as it turns out she has a wicked golf swing. So I would have liked this book a lot if the sinister schemes Lottie imagined had stayed a product of her imagination and all the classic British literature she s read she s a fan of the Brontes and Thomas Harding It would have been funny if she was a modern day Catherine Morland from Jane Austen s Northanger Abbey which is where I thought the author was going with the story Unfortunately nope the story goes full Lovecraft at the end which I thought was just dumb. I don t how how much this book would appeal to the supposed target demographic teenage girls I guess they are supposed to identify with shopaholic Lottie and her overactive imagination and ten inch waist but it seemed like kind of an arbitrary way to lure girls into reading about shopping and boys and OMG it sucks being a teenager and then suddenly ELDRITCH HORRORS FROM BEYOND THE STARS And the execution of that twist was just meh considering who the real villain turns out to be it broke my suspension of disbelief and my sympathy for all the characters Still mildly entertaining English 25 stars This was better than I expected and the idea of it wasn t bad at all but the execution was The art style was interesting at times ridiculous in others especially the obvious Bratz My Scene early 2000s influence and the writing was uneven Feels like the writer loved setting everything up but then was kinda done with it by the end and just wanted to finish it already English The rural goths are dicks that become teens that love golf. English

Clubbing By Andi Watson

1401203701

9781401203702

English

176

Paperback

With DC Comics s new Minx line the closest the imprint seems to get to a trade dress is having covers be a mixture of photographs and drawn art Looking closely at Clubbing the book mixes the London club scene with the pastoral hills of England s Lake District It s a bit of a mish mash of a cover the two pictures and the piece of Josh Howard art not working very well together looking like it s trying for several different feels and not succeeding at any of them And unfortunately that s also a pretty good synopsis for the book itself English This story went all over the place and had a slow build up It ended up being a mystery and very anticlimactic English I picked this up second hand and am glad I did It was fun I enjoyed how bratty the heroine is or found herself warming up to Howard or various other small real life moments Those were great. Basically I think this could have been a great slice of life comic or a great supernatural mystery thing but the mixing of the two while something I usually applaud did not work out too well for it But I still genuinely liked it and will probably re read it and recommend it sometime English Minx the new graphic novel line for girls is really not trying at all The first one The Plain Janes wasn t well written but had a decent plot art style This second release The writer should be shot There was no plot set up and scenes were unpredictable at best or out of the blue at worst and the main character was so completely stereotypical that she had no depth whatsoever The art is decent but very similiar to Kim Possible C mon DC Comics Do better than this please Otherwise the American female comic market is never going to touch the appeal that Japanese Korean mangas have With this kind of crap being released how can you expect any sort of loyalty from your readership I have Re gifters enroute right now and high expectations for a rebound Mike Carey the author already has book cred with me for a previous comic If even HE can t pull something decent out of his hat for this imprint I wash my hands of it and will begin composing a letter to DC Comics offering my editing services because they are obviously in need of someone who can find better authors than dime a dozen hack writers English I haven t finished a book in a while or read a graphic novel in a while so I thought I d kill two birds with one stone Dave brought it home for me so it wasn t one I would have necessarily chosen myselfa whiny privileged piece of goth eye candy spends the summer at her grandparents country club and ends up solving a murder mystery involving a celestial dragon wha Eh By the end I was mostly interested in the way the shading was drawn on the characters faces English .

. I took that personally lol I don t remember much just that I found it terribly odd For some reason Idk teen angst is weird. and polo shirts. like i dont even get the sudden 180 ugh. idk being a rural goth.Its bland