Gownley, Jimmy – Amelia Rules #6

Website

Amelia Rules! #6

I was really hoping to get a decent scan or two from the website, but it looks like it’s not up right now and I can’t find another one (anybody have any ideas?), so you’ll have to put up with my scanner and its unique interpretations of color scans. Sorry. As for the comic, I’m pretty sure that this was the Day Prize winner at SPACE this year, so I had pretty high expectations for this all ages comic. “All ages” seems to mean in comics “intellectually insulting and puerile”, and I was thrilled to see that that wasn’t the case here. This comic (which I don’t think follows the regular storyline too closely, judging from other comments I’ve seen) deals with Amelia’s Aunt Tanner, who gave up life as a rock star some years back and has no desire to go back. A magazine puts one of her albums on a “best of” list of the past decade and all kinds of people try to find her to get her to play again. It’s all told through the eyes of a child who’s suddenly popular at school because of her famous Aunt and doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want to sing any more. It works on both levels. I think that a child would get the basic idea behind all the happenings in the issue and an adult (and when did I become that exactly?) can read between the lines of the adults comments to see Tanner’s dissatisfaction with fame and having to compromise to record companies. Whimsical art, wonderful sense of realism with the children’s dialogue and Peanut’s eyes make this a solid comic. Read it, then let your kids read it. I’m curious to see what they think. E-mail the guy, or just check out the website…