Zero Girl: Full Circle is the second volume of Sam Kieth’s story of circles, squares, and the highly metaphorical role they play in the characters’ lives. In the first volume, Amy, a high school girl, fell in love with Tim, an older guy working at her school. Her problems with squares, which scared her, and circles, which protected her, were dealt in very weird and very moving ways by the author. In this new volume taking place 15 years later, Tim has a teenage daugther named Nikki, his wife (things didn’t work out between him and Amy) is dead, and he calls Amy for help when Nikki shows strange mind-control powers linked to shapes.
Nikki unconsciously flirting with Amy
All this sounds like yet another fantasy story, but in the hands of Sam Kieth, Nikki’s powers are clearly a metaphor for her coming-of-age, and her love/hate relationship with a young lesbian friend of hers quickly puts her personality into perspective: Nikki refuses to face reality, whether it is her mother’s death, or her own closetedness, even to herself.
Sam Kieth has often shown he can write very interesting female characters, and his willingness to let his The Maxx characters be used in the now-defunct Gay Comix series had already proved he was sympathetic to gay & lesbian issues. But this time, he writes a believable young woman whose sexual orientation is no more and no less a part of her growing-up pains than the rest of her life.
Nikki's mom... dead, but squarely in the middle of things
The way he manages to blend those very real questions with his brand of quirkiness (as much in his art as in the story itself) is another proof of his talent: like all good fantasy stories, Zero Girl: Full Circle says a lot about the real world by building a more exciting, but also more dangerous imaginary world.
The trade paperback of this 5-issue mini-series is available everywhere, including from Amazon
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