Advance Review: Stormie Issues 1 and 2

If I were to rearrange my bookshelf and organize titles by category, Stormie would be on a shelf by itself. The category you ask? It would be, “dark social commentary that shines an uncomfortable light on all of us.”“

Stormie is a new comic by Douglas Brown that questions the celebrity culture our society inundates us with every day. We are introduced to Stormie Strong as she is transitioning from country music to all around pop stardom. The trappings and hazards that are introduced as she works to find her way in this new world seem all too shamefully real. With seemingly all the wind in her sails to carry her to the top of the world, the naÃ¯ve young farm girl learns what happens when everyone loves you, and then they don“t.

Douglas Brown, who is the creative wizard that is writing, drawing, and coloring this comic, has tapped into a question we should all be asking ourselves when we see the all too familiar tabloid stories about young people who rise to fame, only to find themselves ill prepared to live within the image that has been created to sell them to us all. As we learn the back story of Stormie, we see the struggle she has with her new life. She can“t go for coffee, she can“t be as close to her fans as she was before, and she absolutely has to be aware of the gifts that fans give her. It is a piece of fan mail which sends her into a spiral of events that will change her public image into something she was unprepared for.

I respect this comic book. It“s ambitiously tackling a subject that we often see play out in the real world, but it“s doing so from an angle we“re unfamiliar with. The storytelling really comes across as unbiased and lets the reader decide for themselves how they feel about what is going on. I didn“t feel like Brown tried to convince me this was a story about a poor young girl who experienced a series of events that she couldn“t handle, but instead really showed us the choices that the character made simply to try to please people and stay relevant in a fast-moving news cycle. It also was not lost on me that this is supposed to be a young musician, and almost everything you see her do is simply about staying popular, however she can. It“s not about the music.

The story deserves attention. It“s well written and there is something to be learned within its pages. As we move forward with Stormie, I“m most interested to find out if she is willing to say no to the gauntlet of media exposure she is currently on, and be ok with the potential consequences of doing so. Although the story is based on a fictional character, it“s easy to place one of several relevant real life names in her place. Here“s to hoping their lives are nicer than fiction.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

ByÂ Douglas Brown

Kickstarter:Â https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1802834050/stormie-singer-songwriter-badass-issue-2

Author Profile

Bryan Spaulding

In his free time, other than reading comic books, Bryan enjoys listening to his ever growing record collection and driving his 27 year old roadster named Mingo.