Romancing The Stone: I'm doing Girls!

The Luna Brothers DO NOT DISAPPOINT!!!

Girls Volume 1: Conception
By The Luna Brothers
Published by Image Comics

At long last, I sat down to an extended date with Girls, and much like my experience with The Sword, I could not stop at the first issue. So I read six issues, all of which form what's called "Act 1: Conception".

It starts off like any sort of modern day story. We follow single-guy Ethan throughout his day as he awkwardly flirts with a woman who's visiting her parents at the store where he works as a cashier. Then we follow him into the evening, where he's hanging out at the bar with friends. Things just go all wrong for Ethan as he mistakes the overly-friendly advances of the town slut for, well, overly friendly advances. It becomes the last straw for him as he watches his ex-girlfriend have a drink with another guy. And in his one-too-many state, he loses his shit and spews out angrily about women, hatefully screaming at everyone around him. Yeah, he offends mothers, daughters, cousins, ex-girlfriends, local dykes, you name the remark, he makes it. And just when you think that this loud explosion of Ethan's feelings is the beginning of the mess of the whole story - the whole town hears and feels an actual, unrelated giant "BOOM!" For some reason, Ethan is blamed for it.

That's the set up. And you know, it was entertaining and I was hooked. He's not a nice guy, and I don't feel sorry for him, but I totally want to know what's coming, because I know something has to be. Ethan jumps in his car and heads home, but on the way, he nearly hits a naked woman standing in the middle of the road. She has a bleeding wound on her arm and doesn't speak. He takes her home, this mysterious, mute, naked lady. He's just trying to care for her...and oopsie, don't tell anyone - because he never does - they have sex. He doesn't seem to have much of a choice in the matter, but after what we've already seen of Ethan, it wouldn't make a difference if he did.

I fear telling you too much. I do. I think you should go read this if you haven't already. But I'm going to hit some highlights--what I've described so far is just the first issue--so it's up to you if you want to continue.

As a result of the sex, she lays several eggs in his bathroom that hatch into clones. All hell breaks loose as the women go rampaging through the town. In true Luna Brothers style, when the killing happens it's horrifically AMAZING!! I was doing double-takes while I'm reading, and I didn't think that was possible. (I'm hoping to do an unforced one of these before too long.)

It's a very small town, and so everybody decides to band together and fight these women together. We learn somewhere along the way that the big BOOM from the first issue is probably responsible for the arrival of the hypersexed/hyperviolent women, and so they head out to the field where the explosion was said to have happened, with vengeance on the brain. VENGEANCE.

You won't believe what they find!! Do you wanna know? Do you? Okay...I mean this is hardly a spoiler since this entire series has been out for, I don't know, years? They come upon a giant, and I mean GIGANTIC, sperm and egg! Hilarious, right? It's huge, and moving, as sperm likes to do. Obviously, everyone is sort of mesmerized in the way we get mesmerized at the site of creation and babies. (Or maybe just mesmerized like anybody would be if they saw some sperm that was larger than a car, flying around in the air.) But uh-oh....do not get too close to this giant fertilization. It kills folks Sword-style!! I kid you not! The tail of the sperm slices two guys straight through, and limbs start flying! It's super gross and totally awesome!!

I watched the Crazies a couple of days ago, and Timothy Olyphant was great in it, but I found the movie way too stressful. I don't like gore. I know, I say this all the time, and I always say it right after writing sentences where I refer to something that's gory as being "totally awesome/super gross." I can't explain it. The way the Luna Brothers do this stuff makes me shriek and laugh out loud. I don't think it's stupid, or cheesy, I laugh because it's thrilling. I yell at the book when I turn the page and see somebody get ripped in half. I haven't seen anybody else do that, so maybe I should go to a convention. Do they sit around and read together at conventions? That would be weird.

After the spermfight, (I love that word, I hope I just made it up, don't ruin it for me if I didn't) all of the locals start evacuating the town. The whole town seems to be less than 50 people, so it happens pretty quickly. It's sort of like a large group of people deciding which roller coaster they're going to hit first at a theme park. ("You all are fine with the Scream Machine? Well, everybody but Ted. Ted, we'll do the log flumes next, okay?") They head out on this bridge (the only bridge out of town, of course!) and it's shown that all of the local animals are also on the road, but they've sort of stopped. The characters guess, as I do, that they are trying to get the fuck out, too. And then....know what happens? No, of course you don't. You can't know. It's the Luna Brothers and they are geniuses who think of things that this mind cannot! (Extreme? Maybe a little extreme. Still pretty awesome.)

As they make their way across the bridge, the traffic comes to a halt and everyone in the back wonders why. They get up to the front of the line to find the first truck stopped, with the front end all crashed in like it hit something and the two passengers inside are DEAD. There's no evidence or remains of anything else that they may have crashed into. So one dude tries to walk in front of the car and goes, "Ow!" It turns out there's an invisible wall there. No one can get through it--people, cars, animals. The Lunas pull back, to show us the stopped line of traffic. They go back further, showing us how, from afar, half the bridge looks like it's completely faded away. Final page? A visual of the road into town and a GIANT EGG enclosing the entire town!! That's weird. That's creepy.

I totally wanted to keep reading. But I'm late with this review, and I have a billion other things that I need to be doing that involve being outside, so I thought I'd stop and write.

I haven't really gone into it specifically, but I've hopefully imparted to you how amazing the art is. I don't think its really possible to get sucked into a comic that doesn't have great art backing up the ideas. It's the ideas that are amazing, but the art completely captures the ideas, and it delivers them, so if it's slight, or bad, I don't think I'd be able to go into it the way I do, which is almost completely emotional. Time just flies when I read these, I don't get distracted, I just get immersed. (As usual, the violence is so shocking! I don't know how one becomes skilled at delivering violence in comics like one gets skilled at delivering an awesome punchline. But these guys did it in the Sword, and they're doing it again here.

Oh, my friends, Girls has stolen my heart!

-Nina Stone, 2010