Broken Frontier

Adam Chamberlain is a successful young man with his life--guided by the hand of God--all figured out…or so he thinks.

It’s not easy being a virgin these days. My wife and I were talking about this the other night. She is a college professor at the local community college. Being barely older than the group she teaches, the students feel comfortable confiding in her about personal things—many of which she would probably rather not know about. One of the things she has noticed is that students of both genders are none too shy about hurling themselves at someone they are interested in. The addition of passive-aggressive come-ons like flirtatious text messaging to today’s teens makes looking the other way just a little more difficult than it once was.

Adam is a 20-year old youth minister who has thus far been able to maintain his virginity. In fact, he’s so adamant about "saving" himself for marriage and enlightening his peers to do the same that he heads up an actual virginity movement. Adam isn’t perfect, though, and he knows it. He is getting married very soon to his longtime girlfriend (who is working with the Peace Corps in Africa) and has impure thoughts about her on occasion. He also swears a little, though never taking God’s name in vane.

Some people find this devoutness in Adam completely ridiculous, and thus challenge it. After a speaking engagement one night, Adam is kidnapped and taken somewhere a stripper attempts to entice him against his will to be "sinful." Steadfast, Adam makes it through the night, only to be devastated by a horrible act of violence the next day that promises to send his life spinning in unknown directions.

Seagle has had at least one critically acclaimed graphic novel, It’s a Bird from a year or so ago, and the teaser for this in the back of Y: The Last Man a couple months back was enough to hook me. Though there isn’t enough issue for any decent character development beyond Adam’s, Seagle makes due with a strong plot and a cliffhanger that could take this story pretty much anywhere the writer wants to go.

Becky Cloonan is another name that I’m only familiar with by her success on a critically acclaimed work: Demo, with Brian Wood. Keeping in line with other greats in the Vertigo line, Becky’s soft lines are backed by a sort of muted color scheme. It’s almost as if regardless of whether the cover is there to tell you who publishes the book or not, all Vertigo books are under a publisher’s mandate to keep the colors almost unnoticeable. That may sound like a bad thing, but it is far from it. Cloonan should be allowed to shine, and Miller complies.

While this issue didn’t completely blow me away like I expected, that cliffhanger is certainly enough to keep me coming back for more. If you’re looking for a little religious satire with some dark story elements and current events mixed in for good measure, American Virgin is worth a look.