Broken Frontier

High School can be a treacherous world and no more so than for Emo Boy.  Thankfully Emo Boy has Emo superpowers to... well... make everything worse.

The eponymous Emo Boy is a sad-sack high school student caught up in all of the usual teenage angst with a side order of geekiness thrown in for free.  What sets the adventures of Emo Boy apart, however, is intensity.  In fact, Emo Boy’s emotions as are so intense, they actually manifest in the form of bizarre super powers.  Emo Boy himself sums it up neatly when he says “I like to classify my power as an uncanny ability to mess things up.” 

So what does Emo Boy mess up in volume 1 of his series?  His attempts to join a garage band and experience his first kiss yield disastrous results with a twist.  Attending his first rock concert, meeting the band and the girl of his dreams turns into a nightmare.  Contemplation of suicide leads to a surprising end.  When Emo Boy ponders questions of sexuality the results are typically Emo.  Finally, there is the high school dance.  Could this be Emo Boy’s big chance to finally get something right? 

Emo Boy, vol. 1: Nobody Cares About Anything Anyway, So Why Don’t We All Just Die collects issues 1 through 6 of writer Steve Emond’s ongoing series from Slave Labor Graphics.  At heart, these stories look at life going on around Emo Boy and how he deals with the complications of living (or doesn’t deal with them as the case often is).  The angsty, teen, self-absorption is dialed up to 11 to create a satire looking at some of the shallowness of the average high schooler.  At the same time Emond taps into the core of the human experience – being the geek, the nerd, the left-out, the cast-out; being that age when, to you, the world really does revolve around you.  For every moment where Emo Boy taps into a Universal Truth, however, there are a half-dozen more where the character shows how selfish and self absorbed he is.  Emo Boy’s more preposterously pompous monologues and poems are emblematic of this. 

Then there are the twists in the tales brought about by Emo Boy’s mysterious powers.  No one knows how Emo Boy came to gain his powers, no one knows how they work or what their limitations are but it is certain they will kick in at the worst possible moment.  Some of the powers displayed are: growing to giant proportions, projectile emo vomiting, making someone’s head explode, depressing people and causing massive waves of sadness.  The use of this maguffin takes Emond’s satire and sends it over the top – but in a good way. 

To go along with Emo Boy is a supporting cast of friends (yes, Emo Boy has friends – or at least one) and classmates.  The real co-star here, though, is Emo’s best friend, Maxine Butters.  For as emotional as Emo Boy is Maxine is equally practical, down to earth, and clear sighted.  Sometimes to the point of being blunt.  This attribute, though, makes her charming and endearing and allows her to balance Emo Boy.  No matter what problems Emo Boy faces, Maxine will be there to try to help pull him through.  The character displays the true loyalty of a Best Friend.

Of course, the title might not work as well as it does if it were not for the art of Steve Emond as well.  While the style has a bit of a Manga look there is a healthy dose of Looney Tunes as well.  The art matches the story in that it shares the goofy, wacky, outside the norm feel of the writing.  The stories promise that anything can and will happen and the art lives up to that promise. 

So what does writer/artist Steve Emond have going with Emo Boy?  The stories are quirky to the extreme and laugh-out-loud funny in more than one place.  There is also a definite streak of satire and black humor.  Despite Emo Boy’s Emo nature you still find yourself rooting for him – hoping that somehow, someday, everything will fall into lace for him.  Of course, if it did, he would no longer be Emo Boy.  In the end, just like the rest of us, Emo Boy continues the search for the meaning behind it all.