First Chapter, First Paragraph
I’m dead. The deadest girl in Deadtown. It’s been a while now. I’m comfortable with the word. You wouldn’t believe how comfortable the dead can get. We don’t tiptoe. Dead. Dead. Dead. Flying Ace of the Corpse Corps. Stepping the light Death- tastic. I don’t actually know what a doornail is, but we have a lot in common. Dying was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. I’m famous for it. If you know the name Paige Embry, you know that Paige Embry died. She died at night. She died stupidly. She died for no reason. She fell off a bridge like a suicide leap and nobody caught her. She dropped into the water, her spine snapped, and the last things she probably saw was those astonishing lights in the sky, the lights of Doctor Noc- turne’s infernal machine igniting every piece of metal in the city, turning sky- scrapers into liquid purple fire while Kid Mercury punched the bad guy over and over again, maybe because he was grieving already, maybe because he loved fight- ing more than girls and it was his biggest fight yet, maybe because that’s what the script of his life told him to do, maybe because he couldn’t stop. Paige Embry died watching her boyfriend save New York City. When the fires went out in Manhattan, they went out in her eyes, too. It’s nice to be famous for something, I guess.
Why You Should Check This Out…
Women are constantly marginalized in comics. We are backstory, tropes, plot devices. This book is what it is like to be one of those women.
Bought it. I’ll be reading it by the weekend.