Graphic Novel Review: Good As Lily by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm - Page 2

That plot canyon aside, Lily works best when the focus remains on Grace and her various selves bouncing off each other. In the most entertaining twist, twenty-nine-year-old Grace attempts to make a play for the drama teacher who's the unrequited object of teen Grace's affections, spurring teen Grace into jealous action. "When you 'grow up' and go out into the 'real world,'" the elder Grace explains to her younger self, "you're gonna find that guys like Mr. Levon are rarer than a Packers jersey at a Star Trek Convention." But our centerpiece protagonist is not swayed by this bit of self-justification, and she works to undermine her older "rival" every chance she gets. The resulting battle escalates to the point where it jeopardizes the production of the (what else?) high school play.

Artist Jesse Hamm, primarily known for mini-comics, is generally up to the demands of Kim's script –- which can shift from serious moments of self-discovery to slapstick in the space of a few panels -- though at times his treatment of the secondary characters isn't as strong as it is with the story's primary quartet. (He particularly seems to get a kick out of drawing the oldest Grace.) A three-panel sequence showing Grace's father as he lectures his daughter outside her bedroom, for instance, looks more awkwardly posed than it needs to be. Hamm gets the book's big action scene, though: a multiple catastrophe sequence that concludes with an onstage fire.

As the fourth entry in DC/Minx's much ballyhooed series of black-and-white GN paperbacks, Good As Lily shows the fledgling line growing stronger with each release. I have to wonder, however, whether the books' seemingly set-in-stone 148-page count doesn't work against a work that could've easily better fleshed its story with a few extra pages (perhaps, for instance, some more panels devoted to the title Lily?) With at least two more Minx volumes (the very Judy Blume-sounding Confessions of a Blabbermouth and Kimmie66) announced for fall release, it's clear that DC has hopes for its new young reader's imprint. Maybe providing its writers and artists a smidge more freedom and/or room would help to better ensure Minx's success?

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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