DC's new Minx imprint has attracted a lot of attention in the run-up to its launch. 

Quite plainly, Minx is DC's latest answer to a question that most American publishers have been wrestling with: how do we get all those young female manga readers to spend their lovely, lovely money on us, instead of sending it to Japan?  Minx's approach is to adopt the black-and-white digest format of the manga publishers, but to fill the pages with content that seems like something Oni might have put out a few years ago.

This is not necessary a bad idea.  Oni was making some very good comics a few years ago.  The point is, none of the previews look obviously like manga, and only one has an obviously manga-style premise.  (That would be Good as Lily, where the one-line pitch is "What would you do if versions of yourself at ages 6, 29 and 70 suddenly became part of your already complicated high school life?")  So, if nothing else, Minx should avoid the stigma of being a manga clone imprint.  The stories also seem to be self-contained - or at least, there's no volume number to be seen.

First to hit the shelves is The Plain Janes, written by Cecil Castelluci and drawn by Jim Rugg.  Since Minx has attracted a degree of criticism for using so many male creators on a girl-targetted imprint, it's perhaps worth pointing out that Cecil is a woman.  Jim Rugg isn't.  He was one of the creators of the cult indie hit Street Angel, although he's simplified and cleaned up his art for this book.

The story is about a teenage girl called Jane (obviously), whose parents panic and relocate to the suburbs after she's caught up in a terrorist attack.  Now cut off from all the good stuff in the city, and with a ridiculously overprotective mother to deal with, Jane hooks up with the school outcasts, all of whom are also called Jane.  They form P.L.A.I.N. - People Loving Art In Neighborhoods - who go around town carrying out essentially innocuous artistic stunts of the sort that people who've spent too long at art school probably call interventions.  (Fortunately, the story steers clear of such jargon.)  Reactions vary, from those who see the beauty of the art to the paranoid control freaks regard it as a threat.

Thematically, this is quite ambitious stuff.  The story wants to explore the role of art in society, the degree of paranoia in post-9/11 America, and the reclaiming of public space.  It raises those issues well enough.  But it doesn't always deal with them convincingly.  The argument is presented in a one-sided way; anyone who disagrees with the lead characters is presented as either crushed by paranoia, or a raving idiot.  The book shies away from actually endorsing graffiti, since the girls never do anything that would cause more than trivial inconvenience to anyone until right at the end of the story - and even then, it kind of sidesteps the obvious question of "Yes, but who's clearing this up?" 

Still, it does raise the issue, and it's got some valid points to make.  The big problem with the book is that it's trying to cram far too much into a single story.  The other three Janes don't have much personality of their own besides one-note gimmicks (the clever one, the theatre one, the sporty one), and frankly, they seem to have been included primarily to justify the pun in the title.  There are whole subplots about a guy in a coma, the school cheerleader, the token school homosexual, the main character's possible love interest, and the mother's trauma, all jostling for room.  Tons of content is a good thing, but Plain Janes doesn't seem to follow through properly on a lot of these ideas.

The terrorist angle also feels a bit odd.  I can understand why Castellucci wants to avoid using 9/11 - it's very loaded, it's overused, and she's trying to make a broader point.  But terrorist attacks in the USA are so rare that the small bomb can't help seeming like a 9/11 stand-in, since there's really nothing else that it could represent.  And using a small-scale IRA-type attack in that role seems off-key to me, since they don't actually happen in America.  I suppose the story needs actual terrorists to set against "art terrorism", but it doesn't quite ring true to me.

Still, it's a sparky and engaging book with plenty of ideas.  And emotionally, it does work - Jane's mother may be a largely one-dimensional character, but it works because the story is being told through Jane's eyes.  The family works, and "Main" Jane herself is a nicely rounded character.  There's a good sense of inspirational youth rejecting paranoia, and it carries you along with that.  There's also a fair amount of teen angst, but so there should be.

It's biggest flaw is trying to do too much, and having so many elements that it can't develop them properly.  But it's easy to imagine the book appealing to the target audience of teenage girls, and overall, it's a strong start for the new imprint.

Rating: B+

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