We rule the school*
Oct. 29th, 2011 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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However, I still want to read comics, I just want to get some more value. And I'm eternally one of those annoying pricks who listens to music that you haven't heard of (like Good Luck or Antarctica Takes it!, so now I'm reading books that you haven't heard off. There's a lot of value to be found in the smaller publishers, like SLG's War at Ellsmere. It's by Faith Erin Hicks who has another book about Zombies. The character art looked very Scott Pilgrim, which put me off a bit at first, but I got into it pretty quickly.
I think that the bars in the middle of the page, representing the shadow that you get when you scan a book with a thick spine, have been added by the comixology people to deter/stop scanners. By the way, the whole thing is available at Comixology for one crisp Lincoln. There's value for money right there.
The War At Ellsmere is about a girl, Juniper, who wins a scholarship to attend a prestigious girl's school. It's got a long history and is usually only open to the wealthy, so Jun starts off deeply aware that she's the poor kid among the rich girls. However, she's not going in uncowed.

The Orphan is Jun's roommate, Cassie.

Now, at my school, anybody speaking that much in assembly would be sitting in a Depute's office PDQ. Maybe they do it differently in the private sector, or perhaps indiscretions are overlooked for the sake of the narrative.

The Onion AV Club said
We promise that at some point we'll stop thinking of cool comics about girls in terms of DC's defunct Minx Comics line, but once again, Faith Erin Hicks' The War At Ellsmere (SLG) makes it hard not to think "If the Minx material had been this good, it wouldn't be defunct." Hicks' thoroughly winning story starts with a scholarship girl coming to a fancy-schmancy private school, where a rich-bitch classmate picks on her. But instead of following the usual arc of a downtrodden girl finding her footing, Hicks starts with her protagonist firmly on her feet: She's actually impatient and unbalanced until one of her upper-crust classmates finally doles out the contempt she was expecting. And then she enters the battle of wits well-armed, well-prepared, and spoiling for a fight. The book never gets better than the first confrontation between them, where the wannabe antagonist gets whittled down to size by an adversary who isn't cowed by prettiness or popularity, but the odd ending is kind of a hoot nonetheless, and the whole thing is a solid, fun spin on the overplayed slobs-vs.-snobs genre⦠A-
Without saying too much, the ending is odd, and the book could have worked without it. Still, the book is a tonne of fun.
I quite like books about private schools. They help to avoid the bollocks jocks/nerds/cheerleader/prom tropes that you get in every other bloody school story. It helps that I've trying quite hard to get into one (there was one last year where I was this close to getting in. My classroom would have had a fireplace and giant windows and a view of the sea and it would have been AMAZING. But it wasn't to be.
*
no subject
Date: 2011-10-29 08:35 pm (UTC)Have you been reading Friends With Boys?
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:18 pm (UTC)But I do like her art style. It's a little more consistent than that of Bryan Lee O'Malley, who did largely great work across Scott Pilgrim, but it develops so much from book to book that it's almost like they're by different people.
Has anyone read her entertaining little 'Wolverine Breakfast' story that she's got on her website (and Marvel foolishly turned down for publication in Girl Comics, I believe?)? Or even better, the Superhero Girl webcomic that she does? All brilliant.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:29 pm (UTC)And besides, she lives the the same city I used to, which is awesome.
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Date: 2011-10-29 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 12:41 am (UTC)By the way, I heard "The Upside of Quitting" last week and, oh my gosh, did it ever make me feel better. I tend to be one of those "drop it at the first sign of trouble" types (with comics and lots of other things). Everyone else seems to stick with comics much longer than I do, so I wondered if I was just weird. Well, I am weird, but I think I'm also constantly thinking of opportunity costs. Haha.
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Date: 2011-10-30 10:17 am (UTC)After Witness from the World Service, it's the best podcast out there.
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Date: 2011-10-31 04:05 am (UTC)I wrote this in my blog at the start of the year
Date: 2011-10-31 07:03 am (UTC)I would pay my licence fee twice over for programmes like Witness.
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Date: 2011-10-30 06:48 am (UTC)I liked the set-up well enough, but thought it was generally very unsatisfying--very light and fluffy, not in tone but in scope. The ending came abruptly and not very much happened.
Looking back on it now, I'm also irritated by the way the rich girls are depicted much of the time. I go to a women's college which has a pretty substantial population of girls who went to expensive prep schools, and they're mostly sweet and polite, if a little snobbish. Very, very few of them are rude, confrontational, or liable to pick on those beneath them--if they think you're not their level, they won't even bother to engage you outside of polite smalltalk and classwork.
It's not that I can't get behind a good stereotype fight, but when my personal stereotype conflicts with an author's it never feels right to me.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 10:30 am (UTC)What she said
Date: 2011-10-30 07:14 pm (UTC)I went to a relatively posh high school, as well as my other siblings, and it's true, I found out that if you weren't their type, they pretty much ignored you. They weren't rude, just chilly, and they tended to flock together. For the poorer girls in our school, they were just ignored, really.
So yeah, every time I see a whiff of stories like this, I pretty much sigh and roll my eyes.
Re: What she said
Date: 2011-10-30 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-31 10:50 am (UTC)Love seeing all these different type of artworks nowadays, even more widespread than the previous decades.