Saturday Splash Page #165

"Restroom Condition: Poor", in She Bites #1, by Hedwig Hale (writer), Alberto Hernandez R. (artist), Dave Lanphear (letterer)

Set in 1997 Pittsburgh, She Bites is about Elsie, a 134-year-old vampire that needs an adult to buy smokes and booze for her, and Brenda, the teenager willing to take the job so she can earn enough money to fly someplace scenic to kill herself.

Issue 2 and half of issue 3 are spent at the local mall, buying Elsie as many of the things she wanted as one could get in the mall. So Hale and Hernandez have a lot of humor centered on what appears to be a small girl wanting to look at porn, or calling people 'a slag,' among other terms. Hernandez gets to draw Elsie scowling or leering at people. But that's part of the fun, Elsie gleefully saying or doing whatever she likes, and for a time, getting Brenda to enjoy herself and join in, rather than worrying about if other people are watching or what they think.

This is also where Brenda is confronted with her arch-nemesis, a "mean girl" type named Amber. Which also, via the medium of taunting and bullying, is how we get a better picture of some of Brenda's family issues. Outside that outburst, Hernandez draws Brenda as someone who tries to make herself as small as possible. Slumped shoulders, eyes averted. The brief confidence she shows during her job interview with Elsie evaporates as soon as she goes into the bathroom.

With only 3 issues to work with, Hale and Hernandez have to speed-run things. So Elsie has to have a couple of conversations with Brenda about the value of life, from the perspective of someone who has ended lots of them. Brenda has to reach her limit and chew Amber out, which creates a whole mess she and Elsie have to clean up. It seems unlikely for Elsie, who is prickly, impatient and petty, to grow to care that quickly about Brenda wanting to kill herself, but Hale words the advice in such away that you can believe Elsie just really wants Brenda to stop whining so they can get on with Elsie watching Brenda eat something from Sinnabon.

The story was left with enough things open-ended that there could be more, but I don't know if Hale and Hernandez have any interest in following up on it, or if sales were good enough to justify it, and that's without getting into the part where this was published by Scout Comics, so who knows if that messes things up.