Hopeless Savages is a book about many things. Family, music and the joys of being different are only three of them, but these are the aspects that shine the brightest in the All-Flashback Special. Van Meter tells a story in reverse chronological order about how Skankabelle Zero, the youngest Hopeless-Savage, formed her band, but how the band formed is mostly just a side issue. Instead, the story is about seeing how Zero met and befriended each of her close friends (and bandmates) and about who Zero is and always has been. There are a few glimpses at her family so that we see how she got that way, but this is really a Zero spotlight, and it's a delightful visit with a quirky and very enjoyable character.
Ever since the first Hopeless Savages, I've been enamored of Van Meter's writing. However, for the most part, this book has also been defined for me by the involvement of original artist Christine Norrie, and so when she's missing, I tend not to enjoy the Hopeless Savages as much. Norrie contributes only a cover here, but this special is an exception to that general rule for me. I enjoyed all three of the very different art styles brought to bear on the three parts of this story, and was especially pleased at how well a favorite from another series melded with the style of the book.
Van Meter's structure here is, as noted above, reverse chronological order. That means she starts the first segment in 1995, then jumps back in time twice. Given that the lead-in indicates that they're going to need two more bandmates, I was a little confused by this at first, thinking that we were jumping to when Zero found her other bandmates. It took me a bit to realize that while this is exactly what we're seeing, Zero actually found her other two bandmates long before she had the idea of being in a band. And that's when it clicked for me, that this isn't just about Zero's band, it's about her closest friends who happen to be her band.
Each segment of the All-Flashback Special highlights a different time in Zero's life. The first shows us Zero in high school as someone who has grown into the self-confident outsider we know today, feisty and maybe a little hard to get along with but easy to love. Becky Cloonan (of Demo) provides the art on this one, and while I've always enjoyed Cloonan's work, I was shocked to find how well it melded with Hopeless Savages. She brings the more defined, realistic aspects of Norrie's work along with the stylized manga influence that Bryan O'Malley had, and I loved that she could capture both Zero's youth and her attitude, mostly through clever use of sunglasses. Zero appears collected and distant with the glasses on, but when she removes them, we see the vulnerable young girl beneath, although at no time does Cloonan fall into the trap of making Zero look too vulnerable or naive.
Possibly my favorite segment of this book comes in part two, which finds Zero and her siblings in a comic shop in the late '80s. Van Meter has a lot of fun referencing classic comics of the time, but the real joy to be found is in the friendship between Zero and the unusual little girl spending time at the comics shop. One gets the sense in all of these tales that though Zero is the consummate outsider, it's because she's choosy about her friends, not because she's slow to make them or has difficulty interacting with others. The simple joy she takes when she realizes that Emma is kind of lonely and kind of cool, or the mischievous grin that pops onto her face when she first meets Toby, give every indication of what kind of girl (and what kind of friend) Zero is.
While it was Cloonan's work that most stood out to me in this book, that's not to say the other artists let me down at all. Quite the contrary, as since Bryan O'Malley opened my mind a little to the possibility of a different art style (and took many lukewarm reviews from me as a result, which I realize in retrospect probably weren't completely fair), I found that the variety was an interesting way to distinguish the story segments and highlight certain aspects of each tale. To be honest, I liked Brogsul's art on the older kids more than her googly-eyed Zero and Emma, I can't deny that she brought to life the charm and youth that these girls had, and she was responsible in large part for making Emma seem sweet and not just kind of pathetic and stalker-ish. Mike Norton, on the other hand, is brought in for a story that is just as much the adults as it is the babies, and plays both parts perfectly. His realistic, expressive Nikki and Paula are perfect, but I was even more delighted with his impish take on baby Zero and baby Toby. 9/10
