TRANS-SCRIBE: It’s Only Teenage Wasteland

Sunday, 17 September 2023

It’s Only Teenage Wasteland - Graphic Novel Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

It’s the end of the world in It’s Only Teenage Wasteland, and a group of four misfit friends have to try to find a way to survive in the ruins of the old world in this new book from Curt Pires and Jacoby Salcedo.

Beginning after the end of the world, where our lead character Javi is hiding beneath a gas station counter from roaming bandits, the first issue of the four part book quickly jumps backwards in time to the 2020s, showing life before the end.

Javi is a typical teen in America. He’s a bit of an outsider, but not outright hated and bullied like some kids, and he’s managed to make himself a decent group of friends, including Scott, who’s popular enough to hang with the actual popular kids, Gort who’s somewhat quiet, Sione who’s the tougher guy of the group, and occasionally Fogelman, a kid who actually does get picked on because he’s autistic. When Javi’s parents go away he manages to convince his older sister to let them throw a party.

The party goes well, until a bunch of racist bullies from the school arrive on the scene and start harassing Fogelman. Scott gets involved to help, and gets knocked around. Then things go white, and Javi wakes up in the ruins of their home town, giant white crystal-like structures growing from the ground and impaled through buildings. Setting out to try and find his friends, Javi tries to learn what happened to the world, all whilst dodging dangerous raiders who’ve made the ruins of the world home.

It’s Only Teenage Wasteland begins pretty strong, and much of the first issue you begin to forget that this is supposed to be a post-apocalypse story, and you end up enjoying reading about this group of friends just trying to have a fun party, and trying to get laid. Pires does a good job at writing teenage drama, and it feels like it might be the strongest part of the book. This is chiefly down to the fact that once the main focus of the book turns to the post-apocalypse segments things kind of get a bit boring. There’s a mysterious figure following Javi, and you can pretty much guess who it is before the reveal. And the bandits that are out to get the teens are treated like a joke half the time, and it ends up taking away a lot of the edge they have.

The art, by Jacoby Salecedo and Mark Dale, is decent, and the bright, colourful nature of the art keeps things looking visually interesting throughout. A lot of the humour in the book is conveyed through the art, particularly in the variety of ridiculous ways that the raiders and bandits are dressed. It feels like the art team were having some fun coming up with all of the costumes and looks that the villains would be wearing, and it’s fun to see what they come up with.

The book ends with something really wild happening, and I hope that it indicates that this is simply the first volume of a larger story. If it is, then that’s fine, and there are still tons of unanswered questions and things to clear up. However, if the story doesn’t continue on from here it’s a terrible end to the book, one that will leave the reader feeling like there’s been zero resolution.