Review: Cindy & Her Obasan

Many, many months ago, I agreed to review a galley of a new graphic novel for the writer, George Gladir. I came across it again as I was trying to get rid of some books in a half-full moving box, so I figured I'd review it and move on with my life. The book is illustrated by Stan Goldberg, who I believe has been "the" Archie Comics artist since Dan DeCarlo. So what we have is a book that looks like Archie but is supposed to appeal to the manga-loving tween girls because it features an old Japanese woman who acts as fairy godmother to an American girl. If the premise has lost you, well, me, too. The premise of the first volume is that Cindy wants to do something nice for her grandmother, who was a huge Elvis fan, so her Obasan spirits her to Heaven to try to convince the King to give the woman a performance, or something. I was thrown right away with the fact that Gladir doesn't have a clue what girls today are into. There was a joke about Cindy preferring glass Reeboks to glass slippers, and I thought, Reeboks are a '90s shoe–-people still buy them but they're not cool anymore. And Goldberg draws a terrible Elvis. I'm going to be charitable and call this a well-meaning, but misguided and misfiring, attempt at preteen comics.