Graphic Novel Review: The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

The first entry in DC Comics new Minx line, Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg's The Plain Janes is a well-intended piece of adolescent lit whose modest charms threaten to be overwhelmed by its status as a Significant Publishing Event: DC Comics' much-touted attempt at snagging the long elusive tween- & teen-girl audience.

Janes' story is narrated by a city girl named Jane Beckles, who survives a seemingly random terrorist bombing (writer Castellucci keeps the details behind the attack vague, though an early visual reference to Orange Alerts can't help but bring up thoughts of 9/11) as she's strolling past a street-side café. Following this life-changing event, Jane dyes her hair black and becomes a More Serious Person (though we're not really shown her past as a frivolous blond). When her parents, freaked out by the newly perilous-seeming city, move to suburban Kent Waters, our heroine has to find a new set of friends as she's simultaneously working toward building a fresh identity.

She settles on a group of "misfit" girls sitting together in the lunchroom: a bespectacled science nerd, a pudgy drama type and a strapping girl jock – all of whom are also named Jane (or a variation thereof). Though the threesome initially rebuffs our girl's advances ("Even the reject table doesn't want to sit with me," she grouses), Jane ultimately wins 'em over by proposing that they band together as an Art Gang.

Her creation of this group, which she calls P.L.A.I.N. for "People Loving Art in Neighborhoods," arises from two moments that had occurred immediately after the bombing: the sighting of a dandelion growing out of the sidewalk ("If that dandelion could survive, so could I," Jane thinks) and her acquisition of an artist's sketchbook dropped close to where she's fallen. On the sketchbook is the legend, "Art Saves," and Jane takes this as her new personal credo. With the other Janes, she creates works of guerilla art throughout the town of Kent Waters, first being a trio of pyramids on the site of a proposed strip mall: "The pyramids lasted thousands of years," the piece's poster notes. "Do you think this strip mall will?"

Though Jane's stated intent is to bring a moment of beauty into mundane suburban life, the response to the P.L.A.I.N. Janes' work is decidedly mixed. To Jane's parents and the local authorities, even something as harmless as an "art attack" serves as a reminder of how tenuous their safety is. Instead of seeing the P.L.A.I.N. statements for what they are -- fairly obvious adolescent didacticism — they react as if the terror alert's been just been upped. What started out as an effort on Jane's part to bring a new sense of control to her life ("I feel like I'm asking the world to keep me safe by making them pause just one minute," she states) winds up sparking new terror fears throughout much of the community.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is the Comics & Graphic Novels review editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy size acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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