Broken Frontier

Barbara Thorson is your typical fifth grader in a atypical sort of way. She loves Dungeons and Dragons and may be just a bit too smart for her own good. This, of course, leads to all kinds of problems at school and home.

Joe Kelly does something that I am not used to him pulling off here. He has crawled inside the head of this ten year old girl and really developed an incredibly strong character. It is hard to know how much of what Barbara tells you is true, her imagination and wit are so keen that it blurs the line for even her. However, this issue features no giants, it instead focuses on making us care for this girl.

You get to see that she is troublesome for her teachers and principal, as she is maybe a little under stimulated by her school. The kids her age aren’t appealing in any sense. Instead, she hangs out with an older set playing Dungeons and Dragons, and get this, she’s the DM. She is quick witted with a sharp tongue and this alienates her from these friends as well. It even sets her apart in her family unit, who are too wrapped up in their own existence to even give her the time of day or understand what she is all about.

Left alone with her mind and her books, she has created a fantasy world. You get the sense that much of this comic will play off the idea of what is real and what is not in Barbara’s world. I relish the opportunity to find out and look forward to what at first glance seems to be the opposite of Suburban Glamour. The fantasy may not come alive as much as it will invade her reality.

JM Ken Niimura fills the book with an intensity. There is a certain amount of playfulness in the designs, but the mean adults are shown to be some kind of monstrous beings and the other fifth graders, while being closer to what one would expect from the real world counterparts being filled with exuberance, are alien to Barbara as well. Their smiles coupled with an attention to more material concerns set themselves apart from her brooding and fantasy. With a nod to Ben Edlund, you get the sense that if Arthur had been a girl, this would be what his life would have been like as a fifth grader.

Image promises in their solicitation to bring Barbara’s “carefully constructed world” crumbling to her feet. I only hope that she survives, kills the giants both real and imagined, and comes out a stronger person. You have to wonder if Minx passed on this property, because it seems to be right up that imprint’s alley. This is a promising start to what I hope will be an intelligent and fantastical story.