When you see the evocative covers for Girls, you can be forgiven for thinking that this is a softcore porno, rather than a well written character driven graphic novel. Even so, the front covers are perfectly designed to capture the spirit of major plot twists and character developments within each issue. The initial few covers feature the ‘Girls’ in various seductive poses, but as the story develops and we learn the true nature of the ‘Girls’, their covers take on a more threatening and at times bloody theme.
The premise of ‘Girls’ is probably any heterosexual man’s fantasy. Naked ‘Girls’ appear out of the blue and want to fuck the brains out of any man they see. The ‘Girls’ don’t seem to have any higher brain function and can only mimic sounds they hear. It would be tempting, as a male writer, to use this salacious framework to explore the depth of male sexual depravity, but the Luna brothers show impressive maturity with the story, dealing with both the obvious and not-so-obvious issues with equal attention. At it’s heart, ‘Girls’ is a survival drama, with a group of small-time American town folk trapped in with an unknown threat. This is slightly subverted however, as the ‘Girls’ present a different threat to the men than they do to the women. This essentially splits the cast into three distinct groups: the men, the women and the ‘Girls’, with a few characters flitting between each group.
The artwork within the novel is a bit hit and miss. The drawing style is minimalistic with an airbrushed crispness, which is not to say that it’s bad. The environment and characters themselves are portrayed with very little line detail, and rely on the colouring and lighting (which leave a lot to be desired) to convey most of the realistic depth. The lighting and shading give the whole thing a CGI feel, which can be unappealing at times. On the positive side, the line work on the characters is fairly impressive as the reader is able to readily distinguish each character. This is fairly important in a story with such a large cast. Despite the shortcomings of the minimalistic style for the story, it works perfectly on the covers. The clean line work, the expressive body language of the ‘Girls’ and clever balance of white and negative space all come together to brilliant effect.
The Luna Brothers understand exactly what motivates each of the characters including the ‘Girls’, and they make sure the reader understands this too. This is probably due to a combination of factors, none of which are accidental. Firstly, each of the characters are introduced gradually over the course of the first three or four issues, giving the authors plenty of time to let us in on a slice of their Americana. The dialogue is laconic and conversational, exactly what you would expect in a small town, even when the ‘leaders’ (in inverted commas, as these shift constantly, as power struggles ensue) are motivating the plebs. Far from feeling like I’ve been bashed about the head with whining characters, they only exposit their fears when the shit is about to or has already hit the fan, which is fairly believable. I focus so much on motivation, because otherwise, this would just be another run-of- the-mill survival thriller with characters doing apparently stupid things and getting killed for it.
It would be fair to say that the extraordinary circumstances the characters find themselves in, bring out some fairly extreme personalities. And it’s fun to watch how these personalities clash in the various power struggles. Again, the Brothers paint the characters with a largely three dimensional brush and it would be hard to pinpoint any character who is inherently ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but rather is motivated by his/her own fears and survival instincts. Having said this, there are still characters you would want to punch in the face, even if you know why they are doing what they’re doing. For me, this is a positive aspect of the novel, as it indicates the strength of the strong dialogue and storytelling technique.
The icing on this terrifying cake is that the Luna Brothers have got the pacing of the plot spot on. Girls starts off at a steady confident pace, never compromising mind-numbing action for character development or exploring new plot twists. But then, as it approaches its satisfying climax, and “all hell breaks loose”, the pacing ramps up perfectly to reach it’s crescendo. For a story of this genre (i would call it a mystery horror), the rate at which new questions are raised should be balanced with the rate at which they are answered. I believe the maximum number of unanswered questions should increase at the start and peak in the middle of the series, and then plateau down to zero by the end of the series. Girls does this pretty well, and the end is satisfying not only because it is internally consistent, but because of a tidy bit of cyclical storytelling used to close off the series. If anything however, you should read ‘Girls’ to understand how good storytelling can make anything - even naked girls terrifying.