Ignatz Award-winner Box Brown returns with a tale of surfing, rock 'n' roll, burritos and radness! Phoebe hopes to run a bit wild at the beach and learn to surf, and quickly meets Hank, a local surfer also looking for direction. Plus a backup featuring James Kochalka's cute mushroom characters!
Brown's story for Beach Girls is easy to follow; Pheobe and her two friends are at the beach on vacation, with Pheobe feeling out of place and inadequate next to her friends. At the same time, local surfer Hank is railing on the summer's influx of 'beach girls' even as he appears to be struggling to find his own place in the world. Needless to say, the two meet and things progress from that collision of worlds. What's nice about Brown's writing for Beach Girls is the overall feel and progression of the comic; it would be easy for this to turn into the ultimate romance cliche, but it's much to Brown's credit that the characters steer it into a different direction. This is much less about 'will they get together?' but more along the lines of, 'What will Pheobe learn from her experience at the beach?'
Brown's art here is great, too; he has a medium-weight, confident ink line that is smooth and sparse. Brown doesn't waste any ink here and the end result is a simple, almost iconic look that both gives you enough detail to tell everyone apart and to set a mood, and leaves enough detail out so that you can also project your own additions (or people you know in real life) onto the finished page. --Greg McElhatton, readaboutcomics.com
This past weekend I was able to pick up Beach Girls by Box Brown. This comics has been co-published by Brown's small press publishing company Retrofit and DC's Big Planet Comics. This comic book also has a nice additional ten page story in the back by James Kochalka called Dweeb. It is about two cute cartoon mushrooms that find a drunken girl in the woods. There are forty-four pages in the issue and it is printed on newsprint with a color cover and black and white insides.
When viewing the tricolor cover, one might think this comic came out in the groovy sixties alongside some Beach Boys records. The main character is standing on the beach with her surfboard and wearing round sunglasses like Elton John or John Lennon. Almost everything about this comic book has a retro feel to it, but it is set in the present. The story is about a nerdy female protagonist, Phoebe, who is at the beach on vacation with her girl friends. She plans on learning to surf and let loose. She meets a surfer bro Hank, who is a breath of fresh air.
All of the characters hanging out on the beach made me want to drop everything and head to the beach, myself. This is a story of coming of age, although all the characters are adults already and, just to be safe, the book is for mature readers. The reader gets to come along for the ride as Phoebe comes out of her shell. This is the perfect comic to read on the beach. --Dre Grigoropol, geekroom.com
I don't know when, exactly, Box Brown turned into the Spicoli of indie comics. But his human-scaled, chiba-scented stories are getting more honest, and more oddly sweet, by the day. --Locust Moon Comics, locustmoon.com
This past weekend I was able to pick up Beach Girls by Box Brown. This comics has been co-published by Brown's small press publishing company Retrofit and DC's Big Planet Comics. This comic book also has a nice additional ten page story in the back by James Kochalka called Dweeb. It is about two cute cartoon mushrooms that find a drunken girl in the woods. There are forty-four pages in the issue and it is printed on newsprint with a color cover and black and white insides.
When viewing the tricolor cover, one might think this comic came out in the groovy sixties alongside some Beach Boys records. The main character is standing on the beach with her surfboard and wearing round sunglasses like Elton John or John Lennon. Almost everything about this comic book has a retro feel to it, but it is set in the present. The story is about a nerdy female protagonist, Phoebe, who is at the beach on vacation with her girl friends. She plans on learning to surf and let loose. She meets a surfer bro Hank, who is a breath of fresh air.
All of the characters hanging out on the beach made me want to drop everything and head to the beach, myself. This is a story of coming of age, although all the characters are adults already and, just to be safe, the book is for mature readers. The reader gets to come along for the ride as Phoebe comes out of her shell. This is the perfect comic to read on the beach. --Dre Grigoropol, geekroom.com
I don't know when, exactly, Box Brown turned into the Spicoli of indie comics. But his human-scaled, chiba-scented stories are getting more honest, and more oddly sweet, by the day. --Locust Moon Comics, locustmoon.com
