West Hollywood Monster Squad
Author: Sina GraceArtist: Bradley ClaytonFlatter: Wren RiosLetterer: Chris DickeyDesigner: Andrea MillerPublisher: Abrams ComicArtsPublication Date: January 28, 2025
Marvin has deliberate the proper evening out along with his finest mates, Annie and Gizelle, who’re again of their hometown (a suburb of Los Angeles) from faculty for the weekend—and nothing will cease him from having a good time on the all-ages drag present at a WeHo homosexual bar seeing his favourite drag queen. However then Annie brings her new girlfriend, who’s additionally named Annie, and the inimitable drag diva WEB DuBoiz is just not solely missing power on stage, however impolite when Marvin approaches her after her set. To make issues even worse, his former finest pal—the jock who outed him to their highschool—is there with a date.
All instructed, it’s a nasty evening for Marvin, who’s already struggling by means of his senior yr with out his two older finest mates there to floor him. Simply when he hits his breaking level and picks a battle with Annie about her girlfriend, the bar devolves into chaos when a large, purple monster rampages inside and begins ripping folks to shreds. Petty drama certainly has no place within the apocalypse, proper? … proper?
To place it bluntly, West Hollywood Monster Squad reads the apocalypse for filth. Drawing on themes of discovered household, capitalism, corruption, and exploitation, author Sina Grace has penned a deeply queer zombie/kaiju story that asks its readers to query whether or not their leisure is value the price. It bears similarities to Lindsay King-Miller’s The Z Phrase, a prose horror novel about company Pleasure and queer exploitation, however with a queer teenager of colour as its POV character and a extra hopeful tackle what survival may appear like for the disenfranchised.
Grace has a knack for incorporating well timed popular culture references in his work, and West Hollywood Monster Squad is not any exception. This graphic novel is rife with references to queer iconography, and artwork by Bradley Clayton steadily references well-known comics moments with out ever feeling overdone. In some ways, this e-book looks like a love letter to the very leisure it’s questioning, which provides one other dose of complexity.
Marvin meets a number of private heroes and none of them reside as much as his expectations. Everyone knows how harmful it may be to place anybody on a pedestal, nevertheless it’s exhausting to not really feel let down when somebody whose work we love is… effectively, a letdown. Moreover, what does it imply to like one thing problematic? What does it imply to say no to one thing that would rework your life as a result of it isn’t well worth the breach of privateness? West Hollywood Monster Squad asks these questions and extra, presenting multilayered solutions from characters with vastly totally different life expertise and stakes.
Though that is an apocalyptic e-book, it’s additionally genuinely humorous and boasts a number of moments of pure sweetness between its characters. The plot is stable and the pacing is sweet, however the relationships fashioned and remodeled are what make the learn really feel so particular. Grace and Clayton’s work is extremely cohesive, and lettering by Chris Dickey and flats by Wren Rios make every second—significantly the full-page spreads that come within the ultimate chapter—completely burst from the web page.
There’s a lot vivacity in queer horror, and West Hollywood Monster Squad‘s YA tackle the style is not any exception.
Ultimate Verdict: Purchase
