Sneak Preview: Mean Girls Club by Ryan Heshka

Mean Girls Club by Ryan Heshka

Art © Ryan Heshka

Created by Ryan Heshka
24 pages – published by NoBrow Press
Release Date – September 2015

The Story: Introducing Pinky, Sweets, Blackie, McQualude and Wanda… Together they form the Mean Girls Club, a menacing powerhouse of ruthless rebels. Sweeping like a cruel pink and black plague, these feisty females are out in search of mayhem and disorder.

But be warned.  a man’s eyes have never witnessed the secrets of the Mean Girls Club. With ceremonial insect venom transfusions and snake worships just the start, these subversive sirens cause all kinds of mayhem as they seek out pure fear, intoxication, vice and adrenaline, sweeping like a cruel plague of pink and black.

Mean Girls Club - The Frog Wife

Art © Ryan Heshka

The Review

Directors David Lynch, John Waters and Quentin Tarantino are sitting in a cool 1950s style LA diner:

Quentin – “Wouldn’t it be great if we had vicious, sexy, crazy femme fatales wreaking havoc in a movie?”

John – “Yeah, they could inject drugs and rob a lingerie truck whilst hopped up on all manner of shit?”

David – “Guys,,, Ryan Heshka is well ahead of you guys – and he’s as twisted in the melon as I am!”

Yes folks, THIS IS HOW GOOD THIS COMIC IS!

I just received a preview copy of Mean Girls Club from the mighty NoBrow Press. This is everything you want and more from this inventive company. Ryan Heshka plays on the clichés of 1950s Hollywood noir. He subverts the sadomasochistic high-heeled, overly made up wannabe movie stars sirens of the time (think LA Confidential on acid?) and turns it up to levels of ear-drum busting craziness. You are held transfixed as this ‘Club’ goes on a bloody and horrific rampage. They stab and shoot their way through town. Hit each other with huge fish, take hand fulls of drugs, take a break and watch a movie and mount heads of men on a wall. What more do you want from a comic?

Mean Girls Club by Ryan Heshka

Mean Girls Club by Ryan Heshka

 

“Where’s the drugs, sister?”

The creator adds glimpses of old movies like Joan Bennet’s eye-popping madness from Detour or Linda Darnell’s dark-haired beauty from Fallen Angel and then twists the images with sudden violence and body horror like something akin to a moment in Black Hole by Charles Burns mixed with the 1959 movie The Wasp Woman. This is exactly the sort of document that confirms all those fears that 14-year-old me had of the secret life of women. BE AFRAID!

Mean Girls Club by Ryan Heshka

Vancouver-based illustrator, Ryan Heshka has been widely commissioned and exhibited around the world and has illustrated children’s books in the US. His childhood influences of antiquated comics, pin-ups, pulp magazines, sci-fi and movies persist today and his paintings are full of pop culture references.

Above: a Movie create fro Ryan’s art installation for Mean Girls Club, exhibited in Vancouver in July 2015

Ryan primarily works in acrylic paint on wood panel and embellishes these images with magazine cuttings. As an artist, he has exhibited extensively across Europe and North America including at Roq La Rue in Seattle and at The Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York. This is his first graphic novel for adults and the latest in Nobrow’s popular and widely acclaimed 17×23 comic book series.

• You can grab a copy of this excellent comic when it comes out in September from the NoBrow site at www.nobrow.net or follow them on Twitter @nobrowpress

• You can also find more examples of Ryan’s work over at www.ryanheshka.com

Many thanks for reading.



Categories: British Comics - Current British Publishers, Reviews

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