Americus

by MK Reed (story) and Jonathan Hill (art), 216 pages

When his best friend's fundamentalist mother goes on the warpath after catching him reading *gasp* a popular teen fantasy series, book-lover Neil Barton doesn't just add it to his long list of ways in which his life sucks. He takes up arms against the oppressor by joining his local librarian in her fight to keep the series on the shelf. And if he can manage not to repeat his past experiences of feeling like a total loser as he enters the new world of high school, then the future may not look quite as boringly lifeless and doomed as he'd assumed it would.

Oh, to be a teenager, with that certainty that the world is out to thwart your apathetic, misunderstood genius, and then realize there's a cozy little niche of it which is not so totally lame and unwelcoming, after all, if you can just push yourself toward it little by little. While the set-up for this freedom-to-read manifesto is perhaps a little broadly painted (conservative Christians do not fare too well and the librarian is unrealistically free with her patron communications; also, she reads at the desk? hello?), the picture of a listless, awkward teen learning to appreciate the strengths and connections he already has and finding the confidence to put them to use and develop new ones is effective.

The main story artwork could use a little more black or texture shading to balance all the white space, but it contrasts interestingly with the intermittent, screentoned segments from the fantasy series in question (the plot, setting, characters, and themes of which are surprisingly well-developed for a story-within-a-story device--I almost want to read the non-existent books!).

A little too idealized and us-vs.-them, this world, but if you can tune out some of the soapbox rhetoric, you'll find the core message still worth sitting down (or standing up) for.