Review: Pride High #1-2

Artist(s): Brian Ponce, Tommy Roddy.

Here’s a High Concept if I’ve ever seen one: a gay-straight alliance club in a high school for powered teens. X-Men (or rather New Mutants) meets real-life concerns, then.
Pride High1 certainly has a really nice idea at its chore, and when you add to it the Inter-Squad Championship, a contest between groups of students, you get the ingredients for a fun story.

The title refers to the school’s GSA, which includes gay couple telepath/telekinesist Mindsweeper and Kid Mischief, British boy Chip Cheetah, flame-controller Scotch Bonnet and Suravi, a blind girl with solar powers. A half-dozen other important characters appear in the first issue alone, showing that Tommy Roddy (writer) and Brian Ponce (artist) are working with a large cast.
Most of the first issue is dedicated to showing the interactions between the characters, among whom are some pretty homophobic boys. As for the second issue, it’s a long flash-back where which we discover who has died during an exercise. I must admit I wasn’t completely convinced by the authors’ decision to kill off a main character so soon, since the readers weren’t very much invested in the characters yet, but it was quite well-done, and the idea seems to be to have strong material to explore in future issues, with the consequences of the character’s untimely death.
Another thing I liked is that the story seems to offer its characters (including the homophobic boys) a chance to show various aspects of themselves, and it’s all the stronger for that.

The gang meets again

Jorge after the traumatic event

As for the art, I quite enjoyed it for what it was: not a professional work, but a rather solid one nonetheless, where the characters are well differenced (okay, so it’s better than some professional works…), and care has been taken to give emotions and body language a real importance. The artist is on the right track, and I’m sure it will be a pleasure to see him improving over the next issues.

Pride High has had a strong debut. With those engaging characters and the blend of real-life issues and fantasy action, it has the potential to be a series for (almost) everyone.


Notes:
  1. This self-published comic is available from the official website.

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