Hopeless Savages; #2 (of 4)

Portland, OR: Oni Press, 2001. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Wraps. Very good. Christine Norrie and Chynna Clugston-Major (Flashb. Unpaginated (32 pages plus covers). Covers in color. Illustrated. Hopeless Savages is a comic book series created and written by Jen Van Meter, and published by Oni Press. Thus far there have been three four-issue miniseries, a one-shot, and an original graphic novel, all written by van Meter but each one of them illustrated by a different set of artists, including Christine Norrie, Chynna Clugston, Andi Watson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Vera Brosgol, and Meredith McClaren. The story follows the members of the Hopeless-Savage family. Parents Dirk Hopeless and Nikki Savage are old-school punks who were part of the 1970s punk scene. They married and moved to the suburbs to raise their children. The three oldest, Rat Bastard, Arsenal Fierce, and Twitch Strummer, are grown and have moved out of the house; youngest daughter Skank Zero is in high school as the series begins. The thread running throughout the stories is a family which superficially does not fit the norm but which can still stand together and function better than most "normal" families. Jennifer Van Meter is an American comic book writer best known for her Oni Press series Hopeless Savages. She created Hopeless Savages, which told the story of the Hopeless-Savage family. The first four-issue series was nominated for an Eisner Award for best limited series in 2002, a Friends of Lulu Award in 2003, and was chosen as a 2004 Popular Paperback for Young Adults by the American Library Association. The first miniseries deals with Dirk and Nikki being kidnapped and their children trying to find them. They suspect it has something to do with their parents' past; so Arsenal, Twitch, and Zero first track down their older brother Rat, who they believe would know more about the situation but who left the family ten years earlier. Zero is at first reluctant to find him, feeling betrayed when he left. They finally locate him using their father's real name as a pseudonym and working at a trendy coffee company's corporate office. After attempting to de-program him they unravel the mystery of their parents' abduction, which stems back to copyright issues and Dirk's embarrassing past as a teen idol.