Summary
Cartoonist and creator Faith Erin Hicks delivers a contemporary YA romance that brings comic book history and a hope for a new generation of comic readers.
While the title references an occasionally misattributed Jack Kirby quote, his allegedly oft-repeated advice for people trying to break into the industry, COMICS WILL BREAK YOUR HEART is not strictly about comics. Writer Faith Erin Hicks, who has been in the industry for a few years now, uses it as background to write a romance around two families divided by a comic book history.
The setup draws from a classic bit of comic book history. Protagonist Miriam (or Mir) is the inheritor of no wealth, thanks to her artist grandfather selling the rights to the The TomorrowMen comic in the 1960s. Her family has always had a bit of a rivalry with the Warricks, the original writer of the series. To quote a 2017 tweet from Hicks, “The rest of the book is about teenage feelings, American and Canadian interactions, small Nova Scotian towns, dads who think they’re funny, working turf at a golf course, and people who love comics a little too much.”
That last line was unquestionably the hook for me, being a person who has spend much of his adolescence, youth, and adult life reading and writing about the funnybooks. It’s a fairly straightforward piece of YA romance: a (frequently referenced) Romeo & Juliet archetype if the Capulets and Montagues were closer in dignity to Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s families. (Of course, there’s countless stories from the Golden Age of comics about creators signing their rights away, not least of which is the infamous and decades-long battle between DC Comics and Superman creators Siegel and Shuster).
Comics are incredibly weird…That’s why they’re awesome.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay this ain’t, so Hicks doesn’t hit the comic book references too hard for the uninitiated. Some of the geek chatter comes out in conversations between the comics-obsessed characters, but there’s nothing in here that will send you scrambling for Wikipedia. Like the climactic scenes at the San Diego Comic-Con, comics are merely the language by which this particular group of teens converse. It kind of makes sense when comic book characters have represented the biggest box office hits for over a decade.
It’s incredibly comforting to see a YA book that doesn’t take Harry Potter and John Hughes movies as the only pop-cultural references in existence. Underlying Hicks’ tale is message of inclusivity and accessibility to the comics medium. As one character puts it more succinctly: “There’s no such thing as a fake geek.” Comic books need new younger readers to survive into the next generation, and this book goes some way to acknowledging the future of creators and fandom. After all, what is a comic without a reader?
2019 | US | WRITER: Faith Erin Hicks | PUBLISHER: Roaring Brook Press | LENGTH: 340 pages | RELEASE DATE: 12 February 2019
