Street Angel is one of the freshest, most exciting comics I’ve read in ages. It’s funny, sad, absurd, gritty, exciting, sly, smart, and reckless. That it can balance all these qualities without turning into tonal slurry must count as some kind of miracle.
The miracle workers in this instance are writers Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg (who also provides pencils). With a minimum of fuss, they’ve created a vivid fictional world in the slums of Angel City. Wilkesborough is your basic dead end. Opportunity is practically a fiction, unless you’re dealing drugs or have joined the ubiquitous legion of ninjas that roam the streets. Angel City’s mayor would carpet bomb the place if he came up with a decent enough excuse.
Fortunately, Wilkesborough is the stomping ground of Jesse Sanchez, a homeless eighth-grader who uses martial arts prowess, her skateboard, and a no-nonsense attitude to keep things under control. There isn’t any dividing line between Jesse and Street Angel; it’s not so much a secret identity as it is a nickname, and there isn’t anything singularly noble about her. She doesn’t seem to have any illusions about changing the world; she’s just trying to make life suck a bit less than it might otherwise.
It’s interesting to see the bits Street Angel borrows from other comics. The hero with the terrible personal life is an old standard, but Jesse’s personal circumstances make Peter Parker look like a whiner. She’s a homeless orphan, and she’d probably kill for the problems most super-heroes have. Despite her circumstances, she still tries to go to school when she can, when she isn’t scrounging for food, putting down ninjas, rescuing the mayor’s daughter from an apocalyptic geologist, or teaming up with Jesus. (I mentioned that it was absurd, didn’t I?)
The absurdity is wonderfully playful. There’s none of the curdled cynicism you sometimes see when writers play around with heroic tropes, and the creators here resist the urge to overstate the weirdness. They just present it, which makes it funnier. It also allows the absurdity to support the fictional universe. In a strange way, seeing ninjas play a shirts-and-skins pick-up game of hoops actually manages to ground the story with a pitch-perfect deadpan.
Maruca and Rugg don’t let you forget the realities Jesse’s life, though. They do it subtly and unexpectedly, though, so it doesn’t seem like a Very Special Comic. With brief cuts of Jesse washing dishes, doing homework on a rooftop, or shrugging off slights from people she’s rescued, they inject just enough pathos to the mix without lapsing into “This week on ‘Blossom’…”
Rugg’s art is a real treat, gritty enough but with a real flair for comedy. Little visual non sequiturs help round out the setting and support the world-building (Jesse petting a stray cat, for example). The covers are glorious, probably the best in pamphlets at the moment. Every issue (each a stand-alone story) has plenty of extras, from the traditional, squid-themed inside front cover, the ninja strip on the inside back, and the back-cover homage to other comic styles. (As Rugg said in an interview by Ed Cunard at Comic World News, “The comic’s three bucks each. We’re trying to provide as much entertainment value as we can for that steep price.”)
This is just a wonderfully entertaining comic. It’s filled with unexpected moments, comedy of almost every flavor, and a clear artistic sensibility. Go. Buy. Now.