Jinx: Little Miss Steps - Hardcover

J. TORRES won the Shuster Award for Outstanding Writer for his work on Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Love as a Foreign Language and Teen Titans Go. He is also the writer of the Eisner Award-nominated Alison Dare and the YALSA listed Days Like This and Lola: A Ghost Story.

The character of Jinx debuted in Archie Comics in 1947—so, yes, it’s taken her kind of a long time to graduate to high school. Thankfully, it was worth the wait: Jinx is no Betty or Veronica. Rather, she’s a pugnacious tomboy with “anger management issues.” This compendium dallies with a few tried-and-true subplots (who to ask to the dance, breaking the gender barrier in a school sport), but mainly, it sticks to a fascinating story line involving her divorced mom coming out as gay. Given the squeaky-clean milieu in which Torres is working, he’s remarkably frank about the emotions and reactions of Jinx’s friends, who idly wonder about Jinx. She does love sports, after all. And she does dress kinda butch, right? Jinx can’t fully account for her anger toward her mom, which creates a bit of a moral mess—which is perfectly realistic. Yeah, it’s all pretty PG, but it goes down easy, and the slang feels current (“It’s on like Comic-Con!”). The ideal next step for Archie fiends. Grades 6-9. --Daniel Kraus