Every day this month I'll be reviewing a different independent comic book, based on submissions from the creators of the comic books themselves.

The month continues with an interesting look at the word "slut" as the first book in Athena Currier's four-book "Burn Book" series, with each issue examining a different stereotype label.



First off, as far as high concepts go, this series is a brilliant high concept. Very clever, intelligent idea by Currier.

The book is a mixture of comics on the topic of "what is a slut?" and essays on the idea. Right off the bat, perhaps my biggest issue with the book is the number of essays as opposed to comics. More than a THIRD of the book is made up of essays. It was not so much that the essays were not well-written, but it was more the fact that they seemed out of place in a comic work, particularly the fact that two of the essays seemed to be perfect stories for comic stories.

To wit, Currier has an interesting comic story discussing her period (including the interesting phenomenon of guys who can't handle having sex with a girl having her period - how lame). It's mostly talking head stuff, but she works in other things into the tale. I would have liked to have seen her use that same approach for two of the essays. One was a very compelling story about making a "chart" of all the people you have "hooked up" with and all the people your friends have hooked up with and see the various connections. During the actual chart discussion, Currier mentions the boyfriend of a friend who gets very uncomfortable and upset with the notion of making charts like that (talk about overreacting - geez, guy). It is an intriguing story, and one that would have worked well as a comic, so to see it as an essay instead was kind of jarring. Similarly, Currier looks back at her parents' separation, and that, too, would have worked really well as a comic. So really, there was only one essay that probably worked best AS an essay (a discussion of dichotomies, in particular the Madonna/Whore complex). So the fact that they were essays instead of comics were a notable disappointment for me. Perhaps it was a matter of not having enough time to draw them as comics?

Anyways, the actual comic content is quite strong. It is a variety of different stories about the word "slut" and they're almost all engaging tales.

Here's one about the first time Currier learned the definition of the word...



Cute.

I love this story about a dog "slut"...



In total, this was an intelligent, thoughtful comic book with interesting, compelling stories.

I would recommend giving it a read. You can buy it here. I'll probably feature other Burn Books in the future. You can read more about Athena at her blog here (new web comics from Athena there!).

If you would like me to review you independent comic book this month, there likely is not enough time, but there might be enough time to send me a copy for review! Click here to read where to send the review copies.