Romantic intimacy bleeds into their friendship. During a sleepover at Mariah’s house, she gives Lauren a makeover. Lauren’s growth centers primarily on her relationship with a fellow student, Mariah, who has a Wiccan alter and a broader sense of freedom. In these subtle ways, the author discovers a compelling individuality, one that bucks against the pervasive restrictions of conformity. Unique brushstrokes individualize even planted foliage, while the simplicity of characters’ faces belies a broad range of emotions. And yet Campbell conveys a wealth of expression within these intentionally limited means. Characters are further delineated by thick ink outlines that effectively reinforce a black and white (thus binary) worldview. Smaller uniform panels follow, capturing associated interior spaces Campbell frames characters in these boxes, as though human figures can never quite break out of their boundaries. Using the pressures of adolescence and indoctrination of the church as a framework, Campbell consistently captures the stress endured by young women and their bodies within a prescriptive Christian belief system that simultaneously sexualizes and shames them.Ĭampbell reiterates the overarching pressure of the framework formally through the use of large-panel establishing shots (such as a church or home exterior or a locker) that define the book’s landscapes. RAVE follows Lauren’s growing disillusionment in high school as she pulls away from the Christian Evangelical church and the intimacy it affords its flock. All are emotional except Lauren, RAVE’s 15-year-old protagonist, who appears uncomfortable and acutely attentive. Subsequent panels cut between the pastor, congregation members, and Amber, who puts an end to her humiliation by standing up and proclaiming (albeit ambivalently) a return to the flock. She becomes an example of what not to do, a sign of how insidious temptation can be, for, her father suggests, Satan even managed to creep into a pastor’s home and seduce his most innocent child. “I was enslaved to masturbation!” a pastor cries before shifting focus to his very pregnant teenage daughter, Amber. RAVE, Jessica Campbell’s new coming-of-age graphic novel, opens in a church during a sermon.

Jessica Campbell, Rave, Drawn & Quarterly, 2022 (all photos Coco Picard/Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

Rave jessica campbell