Emiko Superstar

Posted by Graig on October 24, 2008

(DC/Minx)

The penultimate book in the all-too-short-lived Minx line of comics for young women, Emiko Superstar isn’t the highlight of the line but another fine example of what Minx was all about. As Johanna Draper Carlson succinctly put it “[Emiko Superstar] is just like the rest of them: the story of a significant (and visual) event that teaches a girl more about what she wants from life, forces her to stand up to her parents, and gives her the possibility of a boyfriend.”

Now, I have to say, this isn’t a bad thing. The rhythms of this story may feel familiar, especially when placed beside the other Minx books, but the voices are always different, the characters stand out on their own with different experiences, different habits, different friends, family and lives lead separating them. But key to it all is they’re identifiable, if not immediately so, then in an empathetic way.

There are many paths to growing up, discovering life and possibly finding love, and the Minx line has been a good (sometimes great, sometimes merely passable) at exploring them with young female protagonists. Now, I’m not a teenaged girl, nor was I or will ever be, but the experience of finding yourself is never ending, and even something like this, directed at a complete other audience than me, can still resonate. It’s a shame that the Minx line has been pulled, a result of low sales (for reasons which I can only speculate about, but likely due to lack of awareness in its target audience) because I think it was an important venture. There’s hundreds of comics every month for guys, which aren’t always at the exclusion of female readers, true, but so very few are constructed with them in mind.

Set in Toronto, Emiko Superstar feels unusually comfortable, more like an extension of Scott Pilgrim’s Toronto than something I actually recognize as the city I live in (probably the same way New Yorkers feel about the comic book NYC when they see it in, say, Spider-Man or Fables). The book’s teenaged protagonist, Emi, is a self-described geek trying to redefine herself. She’s failed at her coffee franchise summer job, and has started babysitting for the new (American) next door neighbors (it’s a truthiness representation, where we Canadians know we aren’t that different from our “neighbours” to the south but there’s still something alien about them), earning some nice money while being stuck in the middle of their relationship drama. She discovers an underground performance art scene, and finds the venue to reinvent herself… but breaking into the group isn’t going to be easy. She finds help from an apparent suitor, though oddly knowing of the scene, he too seems an outsider. She also needs to find the right clothes, the right style, the right attitude, and the right art to make her way in.

Emi does break into the scene, where she finds that the ideal of make-up and fairy wings she’d constructed isn’t nearly as glamorous as it first seemed. It’s a community of people who, though united under a similar purpose, have some of the same issues, insecurities and as everyone else. Though our story’s protagonist, Emi is often a conduit for observing the the stories of others like the neighbours or exploring the people and terrain of an underground art scene.

Writer Mariko Tamaki, a bit of a Toronto scenester herself, constructs a tangible, realistic life for Emi to live, tapping into insecurities, improprieties and far from atypical teenaged drama. It may not be your life, but you could envision it being someone’s. It does venture into twee from time to time, but it avoids TV melodrama nicely.

Vancouver native Steve Rolston handles the art chores and for many non-teen, non-girl readers will be the key draw. A veteran of Queen and Country and his own creator owned works like Pounded, Rolston’s cartoonish style lends itself nicely to simplistic but distinctive characterizations. Emi is drawn like many young women, still growing into their skin, mannerisms often awkward. Rolston is great with physical and facial emoting, helping carry the story forward when the words don’t.

I have to agree with Draper Carlson that the story of the neighbors - of a mother struggling with living in a new country, of being a new mother, while also struggling with her marriage and her sexuality and her husband who tries to be oblivious to it all - is a far more fascinating story, which hopefully Tamaki can expand on elsewhere.

There’s nothing quite explosive about Emiko Superstar, just a quiet, light drama about suburban coming-of-age. When you envelop yourself in superheroes, sci-fi and horror (you know, “boys comics”) as much as I do, this kind of thing, despite its conventions, is refreshing, even more so when it’s well done.

3 and a half out of 5 Vikings