Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: idw, jem and the holograms, kelly thompson, meredith mcclaren

Sting Like A Girl: Jem And The Holograms #23

Published Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:00:57 -0600

Last updated Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:05:31 -0600

Let me start by saying I have the live action movie on in the background. It's not outrageous. In fact it sucks.

Jem And The Holograms has been given new life thanks to their IDW series. In this exciting issue, Jem and the Holograms are about to go on stage to play for a masquerade ball. However they still need a drummer. Thankfully Raya, from The Stingers, steps in. Everything goes as planned, even down to thwarting The Misfits' plot to ruin the Holograms. But all is not as it seems.

In a true outrageous twist, synergy starts to fail without Jem's knowledge, and Raya notices Jem's true identity. At this point not even Rio, Jem/Jerica's boyfriend even knows. I feel like this will be the biggest plot point from here on out, as it compromises the Holograms and can put them in real danger.

Overall this is a good comic. I've read a few issues here and there, but never bothered to put it in my pull list. As such, I'm pretty much lost as to who everyone is. The "catch up" part offers little insight unless you're already reading the series. This may put off new readers to the series, especially with how many "main" characters there are. There's 16 in case you were wondering. In a previous review by Eliot for issue 21, he even pointed this out;

OK, diving in to those myriad tales that Kelly Thompson is running, and it's actually quite a lot to take in, which would be a problem without Thompson's fingers all over this.

The writing is solid, which helps with the number of story-lines going on. Thompson has a solid style and knows how to convey each of the characters. I'm not wild about Meredith McClaren's art style, but I appreciate that she draws very diverse looking characters of all shapes and colors.

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