Most of the books DC’s Minx imprint has published to date have felt like drafts to me, one or two serious edits away from seeming really finished. The notable exception is Re-Gifters, one of my favorite books of this year. Now it’s been joined by Aaron Alexovich’s Kimmie66. I’m not saying that it’s a great book, but it at least feels like a completed graphic novel.

First of all, it’s got a proper story, with a beginning, middle and end, and enough sidelines and flourishes to keep it from feeling too mechanical. It never goes off the narrative rails, and it executes its premise with welcome coherence and diligence.

It follows Telly, a 23rd Century, 14-year-old girl who spends most of her time in virtual reality. Lest you think she’s too much of a geek, this is a common, even pervasive pastime in the future. There are niche environments for just about every taste, and Telly favors the goth pastures of Elysium. The pleasures of online escapism are tainted when one of her closest virtual friends, the titular Kimmie, sends Telly a suicide note. So why does Kimmie keep popping up in various virtual neighborhoods?

Alexovich takes good advantage of the vagaries of online friendships as the mystery unfolds. Is Kimmie really dead? Should Telly violate her privacy by trying to match a real person to the avatar? Telly’s investigation is constructed well, and she doesn’t demonstrate any skills or insights that tax credibility.

Not all of it works perfectly. There’s apparently a ban of some sort on frequenting more than one niche community, though I’m never really sure why. Kimmie is never really a vivid presence, so the revelations about her on- and offline lives don’t have as much weight as they seem like they should. The characters generally have distinct voices, but some of the invented future slang is a little clumsy. And there are some weird little things that stand out. (Anyone can sink into an immersive VR environment but they still wash dishes by hand? “Homo” is still a slur 200 years in the future? The work of Patrick Swayze has survived the test of time?)

But it does hang together when all is said and done, and Alexovich is a very talented illustrator. His character designs are particularly appealing, and the virtual landscapes are interesting.

It sounds like I’m damning the book with faint praise, and I have to admit that’s partly true. Noting that a book seems ready for publication isn’t that big of a compliment, and it might not seem particularly noteworthy from another publisher or imprint. But it does seem to buck the trend of the current roster of Minx books, and it’s perfectly competent work on its merits.

I wish I could say that I liked Good as Lily, the final book in the first wave of books from DC’s Minx imprint. But I can’t, and I don’t think I can even say it’s very good.

It’s written by Derek Kirk Kim, creator of the marvelous, deservedly award-winning Same Difference and Other Stories (Top Shelf). Maybe my appreciation for that book left my expectations unfairly high, but Good as Lily is clunky in just about every respect.

It’s about an 18-year-old girl named Grace whose birthday is slightly marred by a conk on the head from a piñata. After she comes around, she finds herself surrounded by variously aged versions of herself at six, 29, and 70. How will she manage this wacky development and keep the school play alive?

(Spoilers after the cut.)

The answer is, “Blandly,” for the most part. One of the major problems is that Grace, though pleasant enough, doesn’t inspire you to wonder what she’ll be like years down the road, or to be curious about what she was like in the past. The other Graces are more types than characters, and it’s hard to determine precisely what 18-year-old Grace is supposed to be taking away from this strange encounter. She’s not at any particular crisis point, either anxious about the future or dwelling on the past.

The let’s-put-on-a-show plot is rendered largely irrelevant by its predictability. When budget woes force the school district to cancel the school play, 29-year-old Grace convinces the troupe to fund it themselves. (As an aside, I don’t think plucky kids funding their own arts activities teaches school administrators anything other than that the arts will take care of themselves, and that individual passion will absolve them of the responsibility of providing varied activities.) Screwball mishaps ensue, mostly to give illustrator Jesse Hamm something lively to draw.

And there’s a Mean Girl wedged into the narrative, mostly for the sake of having a Mean Girl on hand to get her comeuppance. If Minx wanted to be really daring, they’d write a book about a pretty, popular girl laboring under the tyranny of nerds.

I’m left with the impression that Kim is writing down to his audience, which is unfortunate and unnecessary. There’s a distressing amount of expository dialogue to prop up slim characterization. People tell each other how wonderful and interesting they are, though there’s little in terms of action that lets them demonstrate those qualities.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a couple of great-ish scenes in it. There’s a graveside memorial that hints at a much more interesting graphic novel (and explains the title). Another scene deftly portrays unintentional parental cruelty. Both of these sequences have real teeth; they’re challenging and layered. They’re also relatively incidental to the book as a whole, and they make the rest of it look worse.

If you really want to give a teen a great graphic novel, track down a copy of Same Difference. It may not be written specifically for them, but I think they’ll find it a lot more satisfying.

Clubbing, the third offering in DC’s Minx line, is a sneakily ambitious mash-up that almost works. Writer Andi Watson has taken bits from Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, and even Rider Haggard and put them into the hands of a very contemporary young protagonist. It’s not really the heroine’s fault that it ends up being a bit too much and too little at the same time.

Lottie Brooks is a goth fashionista party girl (if such a creature can exist) who’s gone a tiny bit too far. An ill-conceived fake ID has led her to be shipped off to her country bumpkin grandparents for the summer. It could be a ghastly homage to The Simple Life or something equally vapid and distasteful, or Watson could guide her to Learn a Valuable Lesson About Simplicity and its Wisdom, but Lottie, for all of her affectations, isn’t a hopeless brat or snob, and Watson isn’t given to preach. Instead of trying to remake the village in her image, she decides to go along for the ride for the duration of her exile from London.

Lottie’s a surprisingly appealing character in spite of her egregious fashion choices and occasional tendency to pout. She gets in the spirit of things, and she’s reasonably gracious to her new neighbors. That’s a good thing, because Watson hasn’t resorted to portraying them as cookie-cutter yokels. They’re pleasant folks, and city-girl condescension would be lethal. She’s better than that, reserving her tarter remarks for private narration.

Then a body turns up on her grandparents’ golf course. What better distraction could there be for a stranded city girl than a provincial murder? And if she finds romance with the groundskeeper’s hunky, nerdy, golf-loving son, all the better, right?

Not really, unfortunately. The plot is a hash, when you get right down to it. As social satire goes, it’s pleasant enough, but anyone expecting something along the lines of Cold Comfort Farm will be disappointed. The murder mystery consists of Lottie making a string of incorrect assumptions until the climax, which no sane person could have predicted. (Well, no sane fictional person. It struck me as fairly obvious, if not at all reasonable.)

Part of the problem might be illustrations by Josh Howard, which are competent but not soaring. Some sequences, particularly those that hinge on the promise of romance or adventure, never really come across. The conclusion begs for a bravura approach if it’s going to come across at all, and it’s not there. Howard does provide some interesting compositions, and I like his character design for the most part.

Watson certainly gets points for effort here. The whole idea of this kind of mixture of story types seems so right that it gives off a pleasant buzz, and I have a pronounced fondness for this kind of thing. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Amelia Peabody Emerson novels by Elizabeth Peters? Probably.) Clubbing doesn’t live up to its potential, though I’d like to see more of Lottie’s adventures.