Girls Vol. 4 - Extinction

The conclusion of a series that has recently been added to my personal list of favorite comics. Obviously in this volume the characters are dealing with being kicked out of their main base of operations for the series thus far, and the ramifications of all the fucked up stuff they did in the last volume, and trying to bring this situation to a close.

Now in the last volume there were certain characters I fucking hated... like if I had been in this series, I almost certainly would have committed murder, or at the very least been killed for going off on my own. In this volume everything's not so black and white. Now while I wanted to hate the women all throughout this book, because they were all so fucked up to all the men, this is the volume where you get to see these ladies worst fears imagined. Now a lot of crazy shit still goes down, but it's hard to see whose side you're on because they're both very valid. See, the ladies are fucking crazy. They say the men are the problem, and in doing so it drives the men to be just as fucked up. So it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy on these ladies parts, but the guys are still fucked up for letting them be right! All it takes is a little willpower, some self esteem, and a damned conscience, and you're in the clear. But apparently no character in this book has all those things. And that's why I love it so much! All of these characters are humans. Because who knows, I could turn into any one of these characters that I hated and criticized throughout the book as soon as some shit like this goes down. So you'll hate one for a long time, and then right at the end of the book, you'll say "now i see, it all fits together, and I hate you significantly less." And in that respect this book is very similar to LOST. Now I know there are mixed feelings about that show, but it's not a show about answers, it's a show about characters. So if you want to know what the Black Smoke is, or these murderous girls in the case of this book, you're kind of SOL, but if you want to know what makes each of these characters tick, then you're certainly in luck.

The last volume set the bar pretty high for messed up shit that goes down, as far as the characters are concerned, and while this book doesn't raise that bar, it does skirt over it. And by that I mean that there is still quite a bit of depravity, it just doesn't get much worse. Which is a good thing, because I don't think I could stomach too much more from this book. I will say there was one sub-plot/mini sequence where the women survivors were hunting down the men to stop them from reproducing with the girls. Now that's not a huge deal, but the writers found a different way for each of the men to be hanging out with the killer girls... this felt a little forced to me, and I don't think every character needed to be, especially since the pay off is only shown for one or two of those characters. Also the main character Ethan starts to lose his shit a little bit. He starts having these weird dreams/hallucinations/visions, and it's good about making you not sure what's real and not until the end.

That being said I wasn't totally in love with the overall ending. It basically wraps things up all in one issue, and it felt as though it may have been done a bit too quickly, and overall this crazy event had no repercussions on the world as a whole, just a few of these characters in it... I didn't hate it, just didn't love it either. Maybe if they had a few more issues, or even just one more epilogue issue, I would have been alright. But for a series that had me dying to know what was next, the resolution was a tad bit lack luster...

Overall a fantastic series, and I highly recommend every volume. Go check it out, I've never read another story like it, and I can't remember a more original survival story! You can Search Amazon.com for Girls Vol. 4 Extinction, or you can just click the box below and purchase it for yourself!

Girls Vol. 3 - Survival

So now three quarters of the way into the book, and we still have no idea what the fuck is going on in this town. I mean don't get me wrong, we've got a pretty good idea what's happening, but why or how? Yeah... don't look forward to getting any answers in this volume. If that's something that's important to you, then you're kind of shit out of luck, if not, like me, then this volume was fucking sweet!

The weirdness gets cranked up to maximum volume. I mean shit has been fucked up throughout this whole series, but in this volume, the creepiness, and the pervertedness, and the depravity, and the insanity are all at maximum levels. All the while these survivors are practically ripping each other apart because the tension is so high. I love books like this so much. I don't understand why more Survival Horror stories don't get this really easy formula. It doesn't matter what the "monster" is per say, but what does matter is the mood. And the tone in this book is spot on. I will say that there are a couple of characters who have seemed pretty normal up until now who are kind of pushed to their limits. Not only in what they can take, but what the audience can take as well. There are certain things that happen that you'll want to punch certain characters right in the face, and other times you'll want to just bury them alive. This next bit is kind of a *Spoiler Alert* but I've been waiting to get to this volume, so i can talk about this fucking lady. There's this one lady, and this lady is always in one of these survival stories, but she grows into a character who has the ability to turn all the other ladies, and some of the guys too, into mindless drones doing her fucked up bidding. You can almost never pick her out from the beginning either, because she's always like "oh, don't mind me, I'm totally mild mannered, and am totally not a insane bad guy : )" But then let shit hit the fan a little bit, and she goes into super villain mode! It is absolutely crazy what some of these characters do in this volume, and what other characters let them get away with. I kind of walked the line between loving seeing the depravity of these characters, and really wishing a giant sperm would shoot them with a laser. There was a handful of scenes that i really liked these villainous ladies though, specifically one where they make a pit with sharpened poles and lure the girls in so that they can mow them down with shotguns. Now psychopath ladies or not, that's kind of badass...

I don't know what else to say about this series without giving the best parts away, but i am still digging the shit out of it, and i can't wait to do the review for volume 4. If you liked Volumes 1 & 2, then definitely check this out, because it just keeps getting more and more interesting, and this is my favorite volume yet. If the other two sounded lame, and this one sounds cool, go back and check out the first two, because this one probably won't make any fucking sense without them. Not only that, but now that you know where the story's going, it might be a bit easier to accept the weirdness. If/When you decide to pick up this series, you can Search Amazon.com for The Girls Vol. 3 Survival, or just click the box below.

Thanks for reading!
James

Girls Vol. 2 - Emergence Review

    

Alright, so if you haven't read these first two volumes yet, there are probably going to be some spoilers ahead! The book starts right up where the last one left off and some pretty big shit goes down in these first couple of pages. This is so smart on the writers part because they find a way to isolate the characters, and create that non escapable feeling of claustrophobia. Also it eliminates a large quantity of people in the town making the cast of the book large, but not overwhelming. 

For a large part of this book the cast is split into three groups. One is the survivors from the bridge incident who are now hunkered down in the largest house in town and they mostly just sit around and interact with each other.. The other is a group including the Sheriff who head to the north exit to see if they can escape there. The last is the Pickett father and son duo who basically serves as the comic relief.

So the first group of people find out that one of the survivor guys slept with a bunch of these girls, and in turn that Ethan was the first one to do so. Then everyone freaks out and begins to persecute these two dues. Now the one guy who slept with them did it in the road after a shit load of people died and some of the girls even murdered people. That guy's kind of fucked up, and he deserves to be yelled at. Now Ethan on the other hand didn't really do anything wrong... I mean he picked up some girl who was hurt and clothed her and gave her a place to stay for the night. She came on to him and seduced him. There's not really anything wrong with that in my eyes, but maybe i'm a bit bias because i'm a guy, but whatever. But other than that it's kind of like I said, they don't really have a lot to do. The dialogue is great, so I didn't have a problem with it, but I can see someone who is more driven by action being a bit bored until the later half of this book. But regardless of whether you like the action or dialogue more, the climax of this volume is really fucking cool, and i don't want to say more than that, but it's creepy and you're not sure what exactly is going on, or who's going to survive. 

The second group led by Wes, the Sheriff, heads to the north and when they realize they're walled in there too, they begin to search to see how far this wall goes. I'm not really sure why this was done, because they don't really have a lot to do. I mean I didn't have a huge problem with it while I was reading it, it's just in retrospect. I guess it allows tensions back at the house to grow between everyone without a source of authority, but other than that the coolest thing that comes out of it is a fight with a bear... 

These last two characters are insinuated to be kind of villainous, but mostly they come off as incompetent. That being said it is really fun to watch them fuck off and get messed up. I laughed out loud several times during these parts and are the funniest parts in the series thus far. After a while this group meets up with the second and there's a bit of confrontation, but it's resolved pretty quickly. This all builds towards a bit of a conclusion for the book, but it's more a cliff hanger than anything. 

I read right through this volume, and loved almost all of it. The mysteries of this series are so intriguing that I found myself rushing to the end of every chapter. It might not grab everyone this way, but by this volume you should know if it's for you or not. If you like what you see, you can Search Amazon.com for Girls Vol. 2 Emergence, or you can click the box below. 

Thanks for reading

James

Girls Vol. 1 - Conception Review

Alright, I'll start off by saying that the covers on these books make them come off as some kind of softcore porn. They are not. This is a legitimate survival horror story, and a pretty good one too. The story starts out with this sexually frustrated character named Ethan. Well throughout the first part of the book he keeps trying lay the charm on some ladies, and he keeps getting shot down. Hard. Well in the first issue he kind of losses his shit and basically goes off on a chauvinistic rant about how all women are bitches. Now maybe this is a little fucked up to say, but I liked this guy from the get go. Not because he's a woman hater of course, but because he's a real dude with real frustrations. Well on his ride home he finds a naked woman injured in the street. He tries to do the right thing and help her, but she doesn't want to go to a hospital, so he takes her back to his place. Once she's back he makes it clear he has the most honest of intentions, but she kind of seduces him, and they get it on. Well the next day he goes to the police station to get the sheriff to find a solution to this situation. Now all of this is set up for when this book takes a dive into the really creepy and uncanny. And it's kind of hard to go into detail about that stuff, or even really the premise of the book without venturing into spoiler territory. So... When they get back to Ethan's house they find this mystery girl in the bathroom with five or six full grown eggs hatching with exact replicas of her coming out of them. These girls then go on a rampage and start trying to murder all the ladies they come across. 

This story strongly resembles a Zombie story, to me. The only difference being that instead of zombies, you have naked murderous girls. Which to some people might be scarier. There's some seriously weird shit here too. At one point there's a giant sperm at one point, and the way the book ends just adds to the creepy factor. Don't let all that stuff discourage you though. Underneath all of the awkward imagery, is a really interesting story. I read through this volume in under two hours, because I literally could not wait to find out what happened next. I can't explain it, but the way everything is handled made me get really into it, really fast. Now I can say this though, if you don't identify with a character quickly, you might have trouble caring about the shit that happens to these people, because just because I liked the main character doesn't mean you will. That being said i definitely think it's worth at least a glance. 

I definitely enjoyed this volume, and I'm so intrigued to see what happens next. This is definitely a weird book, and probably not one I'd recommend to first time comic readers, but it is definitely a perfect example of how comics aren't just about Superheroes in capes, and zombies and ninjas. It's amazing how something so simple in premise can be so intriguing and satisfying at the same time. If you like what you see, you can Search Amazon.com for Girls vol. 1 conception or you can click the box below.