Friday 21 December 2018

Review: 'Spunk' by Rhiannon Kagoe

Let's kick things off by diving into the pile of goodies I picked up at Nottingham Comic Con a while back.

The first stall I visited was that of the delightful Rhiannon Kagoe, where we bantered about nihilistic humour, chatted about representation in comics and traded artist origin stories. Kagoe shared some great advice about starting out in comics, but that's another blog post for another time.

On to the comic:

Spunk is a horror-comedy comic which features a small but engaging cast, a dash of playful whimsy and an LGBTQ romance.






The cover immediately caught my eye and captures the horror-comedy vibe of the story well, combining the looming and sinister zombie girl with Katherine and Finn's goofy expressions. There's something really appealing about Kagoe's art style - a blend of manga-inspired figures and textured paintings. The colours are great, but the story itself loses nothing by being in black and white.

As for the plot.. here's what the blurb says:

How far would you go for a date?

Amelia and her friends barely escaped a haunted mansion filled with stitched nightmares. However, with love festival right around the corner she is reminded bitterly of her single status. Armed with only a katana and a dare, she returns to the mansion to find something, or someone...

Yep, it's pretty wacky.

I personally love stories where you can't help but be swept up in the ridiculousness. The writing in Spunk is such that you don't need to question why a haunted mansion exists in a seemingly normal world, or where on earth the main character got a katana - it just is what it is, and you're swept along for the creepy, hilarious ride. It's definitely not something you want to think too hard about if you're trying to maintain your suspension of disbelief.

And so the story goes - Amelia wants a date for the love festival, and what better place to go find one than a haunted mansion? There was that cute (if a little murderous) zombie girl living there, after all.




Without spoiling too much of the plot, what follows is a brave endeavour punctuated with carefully balanced humour and gore. It's all just immensely fun, watching the action-hero protagonist run away with her grand schemes, the reactions of her despairing best friends and the gleeful snark of the story's antagonist. All wrapped up with an ending that's actually really sweet.

Kagoe has a great sense of comic timing and narrative pacing, resulting in pages of Spunk where perfectly placed panels combine with facial expressions and snappy dialogue to create moments of genuinely laugh-out-loud humour. Revisiting this comic to write this review, it was just as enjoyable this time around (and I've already re-read it a few times), so I'd say it's got excellent re-read quality too. For a great story and 40 pages - not including the two full colour illustrations inside - at £8, it's solid value for money.



Bonus: Here are the stickers I bought at Kagoe's stall. Nothing like cheerfully expressing millenial angst through the medium of colourful kitties.



Next week: I'll review more Comic Con buys! Watch this space.

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