Heavy Vinyl, Vol. 1byCarly Usdin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This comic should be re-titled “Awkward Teenage Years,” because when it all comes down to it, the book’s extraordinarily weird mishmash of Mystery, Inc., Fight Club, and 90s-era feminism (a) doesn’t really make a lick of sense when pulled together and (b) is far less interesting or engaging than the actual character dynamics happening in the background. HEAVY VINYL floats together all that is funny, strange, and inconvenient about being a teenager, and does so with immense charm. If only that’s all that this book was about…

Chris is awkward. At sixteen, she’s a gamine kind of girl, sporting sweatshirts, jeans, and a backwards cap. She’s also queer, works at a vinyl shop run only by women, and is having a lot of trouble figuring out if that last note on her acoustic guitar is an A, an A minor, or a D (“This is a D for sure.”). Chris is super-intensely eager to blend in with her co-workers (mostly other teens) because, as the girl says, “I feel … stuck,” and at sixteen-years-old, shouldn’t she have her “thing” figured out by now?

As readers learn in HEAVY VINYL, the illusion of getting one’s future mapped out by the time one gets their driver’s license is altogether very tempting, highly desirable, and frequently sought after. Not helping matters in Chris’s case is the fact that the vinyl shop where she works also happens to be an underground all-girls’ fighting club/detective agency. Shop owner Irene is the designated “cool adult” who recruits fellow women into the club. Whether it’s beating up local trolls or tracking regional shoplifters, the crew puts their brains and their fists on the line and usually get the job done. A string of missing-persons reports filed for popular rock bands has caught their attention as of late. This is lot to take in for a girl just one month into her new job. Can Chris keep up?

HEAVY VINYL floats together all that is funny, strange, and inconvenient about being a teenager, and does so with immense charm. If only that’s all that this book was about…

This New Jersey kid sure has her hands full. The girl she’s crushing on, Maggie is a livewire, and loves the thrill of a good fight. And then there’s a compatibility issue with the other girls in the crew: Kennedy’s musical knowledge is astounding, Dolores is sharp and has attitude to burn, and the store owner, Irene, has an intuition that sniffs out trouble one instant and charges into it headfirst the next.

HEAVY VINYL functions best as it navigates Chris’s inner mind and winds its way through all of the very obvious (and very awkward) ways she deals with growing up, fitting in, and finding herself. The book’s narrative voice is perfect. She gets nervous a lot. Thinks the worst of things a lot. And really doesn’t like it when her “great idea” is really just a “regular idea” for everybody else.

As the story shifts into high gear, the share of the book devoted to Chris familiarizing herself with the store, it’s patrons, and the future this all holds for her diminishes relative to the detective agency angle. This is a fun but far less engaging turn of events (as is the rather irrational sci-fi twist in the final chapter). Training in an underground gym to fight the patriarchy is cool. Tracking down a missing vocalist and songwriter in NYC is cool, too. But this is a hi-def wide-angle lens for a story that only requires the simplest viewfinder.

---

Comics/Book Reviews||C&T on GoodReads