Subatomic Party Girls #1 Review

By Noel Thorne /

Beryllium Steel are: Cleo - lead vocals, lead keytar; Libby - bass, rhythm guitar; and Vette - drums, backup vocals, and they are The Greatest Rock€™N€™Roll Band In The World! Their latest publicity stunt? To be the first band to rock out on the moon! But things go wrong with the launch and they overshoot the moon by a wee bit, winding up on the other side of the galaxy - the only way to get back? Rock out! Subatomic Party Girls is the latest release from digital publisher Monkeybrain Comics, written by Chris Sims and Chad Bowers and drawn by Erica Henderson. This is a comic whose enemy is subtlety - and it€™s the better for it. When you have characters named Holly Deauxcrosse and Dr Alphonse Sabotage running the show, a sabotaged doublecross is pretty much on the cards for our trio of heroines. Also, the first issue is subtitled €œLike Voyager€ which is a good description of the comic - it€™s a lot like €œStar Trek: Voyager€ where a spaceship is stranded far from Earth in deep space, except this crew is made up of rockers instead of Federation officers (and, really, doesn€™t that sound like a better show? No boring Prime Directive, uniforms or Tuvok - just rock music!). Sims and Bowers are at their best when writing the dialogue between the band which is snappy and charming, and totally convince you that these characters have been friends since high school. Like the characters€™ attitudes, Sims/Bowers adopt a happy-go-lucky approach to the plotting, sending our heroes off into adventure€™s way quickly rather than spend too much time on the setup€™s logic (why would a shuttle going to the moon need a €œsubatomic light drive€ with the power to send them so far away?) which just gets in the way of the real story. Erica Henderson€™s art matches the fun, spirited tone of the comic, providing gorgeous art that freewheels off of the screen. Beryllium Steel encounter a space pirate with the inspired name of Alassen Raged, and her character design is fantastic, looking like a sphinx wearing Doctor Strange€™s outfit. Henderson handles action scenes well (KABONG! is exactly the sound a guitar makes when slammed into an alien€™s crotch) and the facial expressions of the characters are a definite strong point of her art. It's also good to see not only an all-female cast, but female characters that aren't dressed in multi-coloured latex stripper-wear. I did wonder why the band aren€™t called Subatomic Party Girls instead of Beryllium Steel - the latter sounds cool (and a bit like a Zoolander look) but the former is a great band name and it€™s the title of the comic too. It just seems to make more sense. I'd also like to have seen some of their albums/songs to get an idea of the kind of rock they play, but there's time for that in later issues. Subatomic Party Girls #1 is a charming and fun all-ages comic and a promising start from the talented creative team of Sims/Bowers/Henderson that€™s very entertaining and definitely worth checking out. It€™s very reasonably priced too - a full-length comic going for just a handful of pennies. Monkeybrain continue to prove they are the most interesting comics publisher at the moment, putting out yet another exciting and imaginative title in Subatomic Party Girls. Subatomic Party Girls #1 by Chris Sims, Chad Bowers, Erica Henderson and Josh Krach is out now.