What I Bought 3/28/2020 - Part 3

Often, when I look back on a disagreement I had with someone where I tried to be polite and reasonable, I deeply regret it. Except sometimes I regret that I bothered debating with the person at all, and other times I regret that I didn't simply let them have my true thoughts and feelings full blast. I don't mean I feel one way about one example, and the other way about another example. I mean I go back and forth between both paths on any given example. It's very annoying.

Wicked Things #1, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I actually wound up the Guruhiru variant cover with Charlotte dressed as Sherlock Holmes. It was too cute to pass up.

Charlotte's friend Claire nominated her for the Teen Detective of the Year award, which gets them a free trip to a fancy hotel in London. Charlotte's excitement at meeting other renowned teen detectives is dashed on the rocks of all of them being snotty little dicks. She hopes to turn things around when she meets the great detective Kendo Miyamoto, but for some reason his friend/translator mistranslates everything Charlotte says and he storms off in a huff. that evening, Charlotte receives an invitation to Kendo's room, during the award ceremony, and finds him stabbed in the gut. Then the translator (who sent her up there) finds Charlotte over the body. Now Charlotte's under arrest, and on the same night she won Teen Detective of the Year in her age category!

I like parts of this. I'd rather have a sense of who Charlotte's supporting cast is going to be, besides Claire. I really hope it isn't the other teen detectives because, holy shit, they were obnoxious. Deliberately so, but still. Like a herd of Dean Thompsons, which is not something any book needs. Unless Garth Ennis is writing something where they're all going to die horribly.

Sarin doesn't get to draw some of the more exaggerated things she did in Giant Days, at least in this issue, but Charlotte is a very expressive character to work with. Definitely 'Esther concentrated', as she described herself. Wide swings between overwhelming confidence and complete despair. The dark lipstick and thick eyebrows amplify the expressions, I guess because they help draw the eye. Sarin finds a variety of ways to draw snooty, irritating people. Norris Overton is a different obnoxious from Paola Tosto. I wish they'd spent a little more time in the trade show section. I wanted to see more stores with detective-appropriate gear and cute names.