Heavy Vinyl: Y2K-O!: Vibrant Music Adventure

Writer Carly Usdin (The Avant-Guards), artist Nina Vakueva (League of Legends: Ashe – Warmother) and colorist Natalia Nesterenko (Soulfire: Exiled) get together for the second volume of an incredibly uplifting, engaging and fun book about some teenage girls running a music store and playing in their band, with its other side of the coin: a secret fight club who gets ready for save digital music and culture as we now know it from corporate dudes.

And yeah, as good as it sounds, this story offers a balanced mix of music-themed adventure and exploration of relationships and feelings of teenager girls. The narratives around the relationship these young LGBT+ girls develop and how they face their insecurities (a crush on a radio host, insecurities around the first time you go to your girlfriend’s house, someone you love going far away) are vibrant and full with slice-of-life awesomeness.

Still, I sometimes want more of this story. For example, I kinda wish Carmen (the trans girl introduced in this volume) was more central or secretly part of the big network of girl fight clubs. It feels great to have a trans woman not defined by her transness and being a cool badass, but she also functions mostly as a secondary character to Dolores, who has a crush on her. There’s, however, a couple of moments where Carmen gets excited about the future of copyleft culture that shine for this character. Similarly, I find myself also wanting to see more of Irene and her girlfriend day-to-day, and would love a more convoluted and surprising storyline. Most of my complains with this ebullient book come from the fact I want both more of it and more nuance to it.

One thing is sure: from the point of view of its main character (Chris) and her little group of friends, the roller coaster of emotions and growth they go by works incredibly, both in the narrative and in the tonefull, cartoonish and punk-styled art of Vakueva.

Vakueva doesn’t lose any chance of showing in their movement, face expressions and surroundings everything that happens storywise and in their heads. The scenes of Maggie and Chris with faces blushed in one panel and then their hands holding in another is a great example of this. As well as how she plays with vestry and accessories to show the personality of each character. All movement and detail in the art is just adorable, defining and on point.