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[personal profile] stubbleupdate posting in [community profile] scans_daily
Recently, I've become a bit disillusioned with the Wednesday comics-go-round. This is partly down to making some bad comics choices and sticking with them for too long (since remedied after listening to Freakonomics' The Upside of Quitting podcast.) Then there's the way that for $3.99 I can get 20-odd pages of Ultimate X-Men (fine comic though it is) or can get a whole OGN for a few quid more.

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.

*

Date: 2011-10-29 08:35 pm (UTC)
nezchan: Toony version of me, more or less (Default)
From: [personal profile] nezchan
Just bought it, based on this post (and the fact that I love everything Faith Erin Hicks does). Probably download it to my iPad on Tuesday, when I have access to WiFi again.

Have you been reading Friends With Boys?

Date: 2011-10-29 09:18 pm (UTC)
mrstatham: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mrstatham
I keep on contemplating whether or not to buy this. Little curious as to whether or not it plays to the 'poor cool kid is better than the snotty rich kid' cliches as heavily as it does here.

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.

Date: 2011-10-29 09:29 pm (UTC)
nezchan: Toony version of me, more or less (Canadian eggs)
From: [personal profile] nezchan
I think someone already posted the Wolverine comic, that's how I heard about her in the first place.

And besides, she lives the the same city I used to, which is awesome.

Date: 2011-10-29 09:50 pm (UTC)
mrstatham: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mrstatham
It was definitely either posted here or at one of the previous incarnations of S_D, yeah. I just can't believe Marvel didn't publish the darn thing, it was that funny.

Date: 2011-10-30 09:41 pm (UTC)
mrstatham: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mrstatham
Like I said, I definitely like her art style, so I probably will - I only buy Wonder Woman in single issues anyway, so it's just fitting it into the list of what trades I want and when.

Date: 2011-10-30 12:41 am (UTC)
mynondw: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mynondw
Thanks for the rec!

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.

Date: 2011-10-31 04:05 am (UTC)
mynondw: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mynondw
I've never heard of Witness. I'll have to check out that one too. :)

Date: 2011-10-30 06:48 am (UTC)
rocketlindy: (Default)
From: [personal profile] rocketlindy
I got this as a gift a few years ago, along with the first print volume of Girl Genius and a couple other GNs.

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.

What she said

Date: 2011-10-30 07:14 pm (UTC)
jazzypom: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jazzypom
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.

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)
mrstatham: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mrstatham
This is pretty much the only reason I'm debating whether or not to buy the book, because the lead here almost comes across as obnoxious as the person she's speaking to, which is not a good way to endear me to a character, really.

Date: 2011-10-31 10:50 am (UTC)
eyz: (Default)
From: [personal profile] eyz
The art's pretty interesting!
Love seeing all these different type of artworks nowadays, even more widespread than the previous decades.

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