Though Bleu Finnegan has largely been the lead character of Blue Monday, I've noticed a shift in the one-shots onto the characters of Clover and Victor, especially the not-quite-love affair between the two of them, and Nobody's Fool is no exception. There are two stories, one focused on Clover and the other on Victor, but there's a significant moment in each story that plays off of their relationship, so that, like Lovecats, this is a focus on Clover and Victor together. This being Blue Monday, there are also immature hijinks, references to music and music culture gone by and a touch of inspired fantasy elements, not to mention plenty of humor.
It's funny, I keep hearing a commercial on the radio for Bennigan's and reminding myself of how embarrassingly bad it is when mainstream culture tries to adopt something like Irish culture for marketing purposes. So Clugston-Major's first story in this one, "Everything's Gone Green" happened to hit just the right notes for me. Clover has the shortest fuse of the characters anyway, but I found her blowing her top in response to the Americanized St. Patrick's Day celebrations to be absolutely hysterical and, for the most part, justified.
Clugston-Major has a frightening grasp on the mindset of teenage guys, because the immaturity and general hormonally-driven nature of the boys seems spot on, and often hilarious. Even more fun is the reaction that it gets from the girls, most notably when Clover is driven so crazy that she drinks and winds up hallucinating about a horny Leprechaun convention. Trust me, this makes sense in context.
The second story in the book focuses on Victor and his birthday, which sees him regressing to his goth ways... sort of. While the boys are certainly well-developed characters, the stories where we see things mostly from their point-of-view are fairly rare, and I always enjoy them. The reaction that Victor gets from his new/old look and persona are a little over-the-top, but well within the comedic tone of the series. And the closer of the issue, like a key moment in the first story, speaks volumes about the relationship between Clover and Victor, even if they're not yet mature enough to talk about that out loud.
With the growth of shojo manga, particularly the many titles that TokyoPop is putting out, the potential audience for Blue Monday has never been larger. Clugston-Major is clearly influenced by that style, but she brings her own interests and sense of humor to the work, and those looking for actual manga influence on American comics, rather than just marketing trying to spin more American comics as such, should look no further than Blue Monday.
