Jem and the Holograms (2015)

Synopsis

Notes on This Title

This series exists in continuity with, but can be read separately from Jem: The Misfits.

Awards

None.

Reviews

“Campbell, an excellent designer who has had plenty of practice drawing young women immersed in music and counter-cultures in her adult series Wet Moon (created under the name Ross Campbell), has also done a fantastic job of differentiating the characters.

The original characters all had the exact same bodies and faces and were mostly differentiated by their hair and clothing. They looked like interchangeable Barbie dolls, but then, that’s basically what they were: Hasbro had two basic molds, male (for Rio) and female (for the rest of the line). Campbell has about a dozen female characters in the first six issues of the series (if you count Jerrica and Jem as two different people, and, of course, in terms of design, they are two different people), and no two of them look exactly alike. Different in height, weight, build, muscle mass, facial construction–they are as different as any dozen women you could find in the real world.

If girls of the 1980s had trouble finding a Hologram or Misfit that looked something like them, teenage girls of 2015 shouldn’t have that problem. And that is the target audience, teens, rather than little girls. While Thompson and Campbell’s narrative is certainly all-ages friendly—the only swearing comes in the form of the giant green skulls that sometimes fill hot-headed villain Pizzazz’s dialogue bubbles, the romance never progresses byond hand-holding and kissing, and there’s no alcohol or drug use or anything unsavory–it’s a fairly complicated narrative, more CW than Disney Channel.” (Source: School Library Journal)

Interviews

The Advocate: “Trans Jem Artist on Coming Out and Creating Comics”

The Comics Journal: “An Interview with Sophie Campbell”