Jake Hyde is in his junior year of high school and wants to study the ocean. He's never even seen the ocean, living in Truth or Consequences, NM, but he's always felt drawn there. His best friend Maria wants to study closer to home, and Jake's overprotective mother would agree. After his father drowned when he was a baby, his mother has all but forbid him to go near open water. There are other complications, like the weird birth marks Jake has up and down his arms and legs that glow when wet, and his growing crush on Kenny Liu, captain of the swim team. 

 

The story moves at a nice pace, allowing plenty of time for the characters to show who they are and Julie Maroh ('Blue is the Warmest Color') provides a dreamy landscape that doesn't dilute the sharper aspects of the story. I'd forgotten this was a DC Comics graphic novel when Jake and Maria spot Superman flying high in the sky towards the West coast while hiking. 

 

This novel succeeds as a coming-of-age story, complete with first romance, tears and drama as well as an origin story for Aqualad. There is an astonishing amount of LGBTQIA books coming out now (yay!), and this one hits all the marks.

For the most part, Boyfriends with Girlfriends was a pretty decent read. There was just one major thing that severely lessened my enjoyment of the book and I am going to address that first.

 

Lance really bothered me. Initially, he is very biphobic and I hated him for it.

 

"My main worry is the bi thing....I guess that means he's still coming out" (3).

 

"I don't believe there really is such a thing as being bi...I just think that you're born gay or straight. One or the other" (64).

 

Thankfully, Sergio calls him out on it and Lance realizes he is wrong and does (for the most part) get over his biphobia. It would have been worse if it went unchecked, but I can't stand biphobia at all. Without his initial biphobia, Lance would have just been boring, but with it he was irritating.

 

But, I still really enjoyed this book, for the most part. I love Sergio, he's funny and relatable. And I adore the romance between Allie and Kimiko, it was very sweet. Kimiko on her own is a really cool character too.

 

Also, kudos for diversity! Aside from LGBT main characters (Kimiko is a lesbian, Lance is gay, Sergio is bisexual and Allie is questioning), Kimiko is Japanese-American. Awesome!

 

Overall, this wasn't anything particularly amazing but it was enjoyable for the most part.

Note: I did not read the german edition, that is just the only one with the correct cover art and contains issues 1-4.   Also, I will spoil the end of this comic.  But, don't worry you won't care.

 

The Evil Within is a comic prequel to the Evil Within survival horror video game.  As a prequel one would think that the history/backstory would be revealed and therefore, it could be easily understood by someone (like me) who had never even heard of the game before.

 

That is not the case here.  After I read through it, I could sense that there were things I was supposed to be noticing.  At first I figured these things would be revealed and explained by the end of the comic.  I was wrong.

 

For example in early scenes of the character remembering the day her friend went missing there is an obviously strange dude in the background of the scene.  I applauded myself for noticing him and figured that by the end he would be revealed to be the villain and I'd understand how and why he kidnapped a kid in broad daylight in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again.

 

It turns out that not only is the how and why not explained at all, but the whole reasoning behind all the horrific events was lacking.  At the end of it...I was more confused than frightened.  The main character has all these visions of dark moments in the other character's lives, but there isn't much time for speculation as the group flees one bizarre freakshow with an axe and runs into a crazy braces wearing bloodspider freak thing, called Laura apparently.  

 

Why is the bloodspider thing called Laura?  I'm assuming she was a student at the school where the survivors encountered her, but why she can rise up from a puddle of blood (from Hell I'm assuming), why she's so pissed off and why she's a spider thing, I have no clue.  The book definitely has a nightmare quality, but for me even my nightmares have more plot.

 

One guy thinks that they are being punished for past bad deeds. All the characters had some misfortune in the past, but only one person actually committed a terrible act, and even that wasn't because they wanted to/meant to harm people.  It just seems flimsy.  The end is basically everyone's just part of some sick experiment?  I'm confused.

 

Each chapter was done by a different artist, but none of them could maintain a single look for any of the characters, from something as simple as hair/skin color to facial features and one artist often making the characters look as if their arms had been amputated after the elbow, the art is just all over the place. 

 

 Anyway.  For kicks I took a look at a Let's Play video of The Evil Within and even watching two minutes of that gave me more insight into the game/comic than I got from this comic.  It was also a lot scarier and tons more suspenseful.

 

So, art was unpolished at best, storyline was pretty much non-existent, the plot was predictable and the characters weren't well developed and mattered little since they all died in the end.

 

This is just spin-off crap meant to make money or sell more copies of the game.  No substance.

 

In spite of some nice moments in the book, I have to admit that on the whole I was disappointed with the story. Maybe because I'd expected much more from it or maybe because I simply wasn't the target audience for this book.

I liked the style of writing, but I struggled to warm to the narrator:

* I understand that Paul was supposed to be a deeply religious person, with Jesus, God and Bible ruling his life, who rejected to accept his sexuality because it was not Bible conformed. It explains a lot of Bible's quotes and a lot of thoughts about God's love and God's acceptance.

* I understand that it was not easy for someone like Paul to come out, but I got tired and sometimes angry of having his coward reaction, his continuous coward behaviour and coward acts, his ongoing monologues with Jesus or God or whoever, and his lasting begging for the divine mercy.

What I liked is the idea of THE GOD BOX itself.
At the beginning of the book we learned that time ago Paul's Dad had given him a wooden box, the God Box, where he supposed to write down specific prayer and fold it into the box, kinda giving his problem up to the Lord.

Though it was not THAT God box, it was the BOX Paul put himself into:

Had I put myself in a box, unable to love and be loved?

I'm glad that he came out of it. At last. Thanks Manuel.


Three stars for sympathetic secondary characters, a poignant ending and educating prose.
I hope only that many target readers will read the book.