Blue Monday Volume 2: Absolute Beginners

Clugston's rep is well deserved

I discovered this series at my local comic store a few months back and took a chance on it solely because the title is the same as a song by New Order, one of my favorite bands. Afterwards, I was glad I did because this series has been a joy to read! I love the manga-style art, the (mostly) realistic stories and the characters personalities, which really reminded me of people I actually knew in high school. If I had to compare this series to something else I’d have to borrow a line from volume 1 and say it’s “like Archie on crack!” Overall, I can’t recommend this series enough to anyone who enjoys hilarious slice of life stories and some nostalgia for their high school days.

With cartoon-type illustrations, this comic collection deals with adolescents in the 1990s, their problems with relationships, with rivalries, with crushes and Bleu's crush on one of her teachers as well as an unfortunate incident at a party.It's quite fun and reasonably entertaining although would suit the American reader more than others as there are many references to US culture / high school life. It all gets a bit tiresome unless you are into 1990s pop culture.

It was about as good as it sounds. Normally, I love reading teen books, but this one was kind of just the disaster that you think high school will be, until you actually get there. No character development to make the conflict more interesting. No side conflicts or stories or anything, really, to distract from the conflict, which I personally didn't feel was a very good one. And... there wasn't really a resolution, either. At the end, the kid whose name I can't even remember now only gave Bleu a copy of the tape he made. And then showed it on TV. What kind of a person does that?Also, there were little, I suppose I'll call them "side comics", at the bottom of some of the pages, that were really confusing and distracting from the story. Some of them seemed to be making fun of the author, while others featured the characters of the story, hence my confusion.At the end, there was a page telling you who all of the characters are, which is kind of neat, except it was completely useless at the end of the book. So... just not my favorite book.Note: I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.

Ein weiterer guter Band von Blue Monday. Die Story wird gut weitergeführt und der Zeichenstil überzeugt weiterhin. Würde den Comic niemandem empfehlen der Action-Fan ist, sondern eher Alltags-Comedy.