iffer's review against another edition
3.0
In full disclosure, I'm friends with the illustrator in real life. That said, I still think that the contemporary-yet-throwback-to-the-80s art is one of the best things about this volume. The character models are distinct, and the panels mix up a good variety of viewpoints/closeups/landscapes/layouts. The story is a fun one, tongue-in-cheek a throwback to some iconic 80s films, with the Breakfast Club gang + Alien + Indiana Jones vibe. As much fun as this volume was, with such a large cast of characters, the writing doesn't have enough pages to get off the ground either plot-wise or character-wise. I think that this series would translate well as the launching point for a popular action TV series. It conjured good memories for me of the movies, shows, and cartoons that I watched growing up.
emily_m_green's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Thank you, Fort Vancouver Regional Library, for sending the bookmobile out to the rural school where I teach and enabling me to check out Relics of Youth by Matt Nicholas, Chad Rebmann, Skylar Patridge, and Vladimir Popov.
In Relics of Youth, Nat Rodriguez has gathered five other teenagers to journey together and find the island that has mysteriously appeared as a tattoo on all of them. There is the rich boy, the former child star, the goody-two-shoes, the tight-laced boy who’s about to join the military, the boy going through chemo, and Nat, who is an orphaned misfit. Not all the teens are so excited about the trip, as they are quite skeptical. The rich boy, Garrett, is taking them all out on his massive yacht and almost immediately there are squabbles. Once on the island, they discover that they have been followed by villains, and in order to stay alive, they must stick together--especially after strange things start to happen. The crew needs to solve the mystery of the island that summoned them before their pursuers can take them down.
Relics of Youth sets itself up as a current day story based on myths. The main characters are clearly stereotypes and it is just as clear that the six will pair off into three couples, though to my taste, I would have preferred less obvious coupling . It feels almost as though the comic was dreaming itself as a movie. A little more subtlety all the way around would have done the plot wonders.
It seemed that the volume was set up to be the beginning of a series, but I could not find any additional volumes, and this one came out in 2020. It may have been another endeavor that crumbled due to Covid or perhaps this volume did not sell enough to follow up. In any case, though I was a bit underwhelmed by the first volume, I was interested in reading a second volume--though if the library did not have it, I doubt that I would have purchased it.
Would I teach this book? I doubt it. Relics of Youth seems recursive of Runaways and Teen Titans. If I were teaching a graphic novel class, I would be more likely to teach one of those series than Relics of Youth, as these characters did not grab me as much and it seems nearly unfathomable that their parents would be okay with their teenaged children traveling without them or another chaperone. There’s fantasy and then there’s fantasy.
geolatin's review against another edition
3.0
Superhero origin story. I’m enjoying it enough I’ll keep a lookout for the next book.
zepysgirl's review against another edition
1.0
Was really bad? Sort of like you took Lost and Sens8 and mashed them together while cutting out any of the good bits. No idea why it was on a great graphic novels list.
To top it all off, the story intentionally swerved away from a tidy ending into making things an artificial cliffhanger in the hopes of a presumed second volume…? Which I will not be reading.
To top it all off, the story intentionally swerved away from a tidy ending into making things an artificial cliffhanger in the hopes of a presumed second volume…? Which I will not be reading.
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