Scooter Girl

Scooter Girl made me want to buy my Vespa. Of course, I had already bought and been riding my LX150 for years by the time I read Chynna Clugston’s ode to love, revenge, cheap morals, and the scooter nation. So I presume that the joy given me by her slender volume of six chapters somehow crossed the boundaries of time and arrived to me in the past before I had bought my own beloved Vespa. Convoluted, I know—but the book is that much fun. And while it’s never really the point (love is!), the book can’t help but convey this unaffected adoration of scooters and some mythical lifestyle attached to scootering.

At least I presume it’s mythical.

I’ve never been part of a club or been to a meet-up or rally. I don’t know any mods. I don’t even know anyone else who rides. Maybe Scooter Girl is an insider’s look at a rogue sub-culture or maybe it’s pure fantasy for scooter fetishists. I may never know for sure. I just use my Vespa to get to work and ride down to the beach with my wife when the mood (and babysitting) strikes us.

In any case, Clugston’s work here is rollicking and fun and depraved (in its way). Her artwork as usual has its own peculiar and wonderful sensibility to it. Her characters speak with a crass sort of honesty that I find refreshing. They’re horny and lazy and stylish and self-centered—though not in a way that capitalizes on those qualities for mere marketing purposes. These characters are simply like this because that’s the kind of characters they are.

Clugston’s story here is almost inconsequential because the fun of the book is in watching these characters interact with and/or hate each other. Still, despite this she still manages to pull together something amusing. Ashton Archer may be cursed. Well, not at first because at first he is the king of his world. Top grades, top clubs, top athlete, and top of the Bay Area’s scooter scene. And he’s knotted knickers with pretty much every girl in his school, whether they were single or not. As is typical (in stereo even) of this kind of story set-up, the arrival of new student Margaret Sheldon and her brother Drake brings everything to a crashing halt. Ashton’s personal grata turns immediately to Status: Non. And here all he wants is to get into Margaret’s pants. And then maybe kill her.

So yeah, that sounds pretty stupid. And is pretty stupid. But the amazing thing is that this crappy premise for a story is completely engaging when it plays out in Scooter Girl. Clugston owns this thing and it shows on every page.

 

 

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Comics by Seth T. Hahne