the geekocracy

A Pre-Review: Judging La Perdida by its Cover

I never understood the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I mean, that’s fucking crazy. If I didn’t judge every bad book I’ve never read by its cover then I would waste my time reading a lot of shitty books. I realized recently that there are some (quite a few) fools out there who actually live their life by this insane motto. In order to help my foolish brothers, I’m gonna go ahead and judge some books by their covers so they don’t have to. You guys should thank me. If I were around last month, I probably could have prevented you from sleeping with that ugly girl. Or last week I could have told you not to adopt that retarded kid who may or may not have been born a crack baby. Or yesterday I could have told you it’d be a bad idea to eat that Baconator… Actually I probably would have let you do that. Regardless of baconators, I’m about to make your life a lot easier.

The first book I’m going to judge by its cover is La Perdida by Jessica Abel.

For those of you who don’t know (or are too lazy to go to Wikipedia) Jessica Abel is a graphic novelist mostly known for her series Art Babe. She’s one of those people, who, like, draws characters who are, like, not, like, super heroes, and stuff. And, get this, her books aren’t always in color! Can you believe the audacity? Publishing a black and white book, in this day and age. Despite all of this she still seems to be pretty popular, especially among the crowd who wears old t-shirts and suit jackets that they bought at thrift shops. And despite that, she still sounds like a pretty cool chick to me.

When looking at any cover the first thing I analyze, unfairly, is the name. Jessica Abel is a good name to be on the cover of a comic for two solidly, awesome reasons. First, it’s a female name, and girls are awesome.

See! SHE’S A GIRL!!!

Second, her name is an even number of words. Artists who tend to have an odd number of words in their name, one or three typically, are way to pretentious and lame for me to give a chance. I don’t care if you tell me that the Vertigo comic The Losers is awesome, I ain’t gonna read it because the artist’s name is Jock. Just Jock. Where does he come off only needing one name? You won’t catch me reading one of those comics by that new up and comer Michael Bryan Bendes, or whatever his name is. Three words in a name is just too damn many. If you’re so “prolific” that your first and last name aren’t enough, that you need your middle name in there too, chances are you put more words in your comic than I wants to read. If I wanted a novel, I’d pick up Dean Koontz. Jessica Abel, unlike Jock and Bryan Reed Bindes (or whatever,) has a good name and is well on her way to having her book read by me.

Then there’s the cover itself. A beautiful wrap around that’s brightly colored and really stands out on a shelf. Also, there’s a statue drawn on the cover… A naked statue… With boobs. When someone’s brave enough to draw boobs on the cover of their graphic novel, even fake, statue boobs, you know there’s gonna be some crazy shit inside!

At this point, between Jessica’s well rounded name and voluptuous cover I’m ready to read. Before I go that far though I flip through the pages real quick. I mean, I may have already judged the book awesome based on its cover, so now it’s time to base it on random pages I flip to that are most likely out of context. I mean, how else are you going to judge someone? I find my first negative of the book as I flip through the pages: none of the art turns into a cartoon when you flip the pages really fast. Of course, most books fail this test. Still, would it be that hard to add a sweet-ass stick figure cartoon in the corner of more books?

Flipping through the book slower I see that Jessica’s illustrations are filled with gestures and absurd (in a good way) facial features. Without reading any of the words I can tell the characters, the illustrations, really tell an emotional story. Flipping through the pages may not tell me that Jessica Abel is a good writer, but it does tell me she’s a good story teller. Her art style isn’t that far off from the Hernandez brothers, who do work in the same vain as Jessica. Her art style is generally reminiscent of Gilbert Hernandez, but when you look at the smaller details like the wide range of emotional movement in the characters faces and you see a lot of Jaime Hernandez. It’s certainly clear she sees comics as an art form worth respecting. Now, while I may hate art because it’s for pansies and wuss’, I think Jessica’s respect for sequential art is commendable. She’s definitely an artist’s artist.

Between boobies, nicely balanced names and perty art I’m ready to crack La Perdida open. Maybe, once I read it, I’ll even make a real review. Until then go out in the world and look at it from a new, liberated point of view. A point of view where you can, in fact, judge a book (person, organization etc.) by its cover.

<3 Mason “Grammar Rapist” Johnson