Written by Michael Sacal
Drawn by Jill Lamarina
Published by Tidalwave Productions/Bluewater Comics
If you’re a pre-teen, or the parent of a pre-teen, then you probably know who Victoria Justice is, as this young actress/singer initially rose to fame as one of the stars of the Nickelodeon TV series Zoey 101, as well as appearing in other assorted Disney shows aimed at the “tween” market. And now the publisher Tidalwave Productions has decided to capitalize on her fame by putting out this biographical comic-book about her.
Written by Michael Sacal, whose story in FTL #4 I enjoyed, this 22 page issue is pretty much a by-the-numbers summery of Victoria’s life and career (at least up to last year). Sacal opted to use the third-person narration technique, in which case he basically just tells you the major points of her life, with accompanying panels illustrating the events. It’s like an illustrated version of Victoria’s Wikipedia entry. It starts from the day she was born, in February 1993, to her first foray into acting where she started in TV commercial, her time as a child fashion model, to her family moving from Florida to California when she was 10 to help pursue her career. Appearing on an episode of Gilmore Girls, more modeling, some small parts in feature films, then her “big break” appearing on The Suite Life Of Zak and Cody, which lead to the role on Zoey 101. And so on, showing her first attempts at launching a music career, including starring in the Nickelodeon musical film Spectacular, which lead to her own musical film Victorious, her charity work, and basically ending with her work in last year’s film Fun Size.
If you’re already a dedicated fan of hers (and, really, who else would buy a comic-book likes this?), you probably already know all of this information. This the problem with writing it in this format, is that it’s not really “entertaining,” and thus is falls to the artwork to make it worth reading. And, unfortunately, that’s where this book falls apart. Jill Lamarina is the artist in this book, and her work is, to put it bluntly, not good. Not good at all. Her line work is very amateurish looking, and her biggest weakness is her faces, everyone’s faces in this book looks ugly. She is also the colorist in this book, and does a better job there. I think she needs a lot more practice until she’s good enough for sequential artwork.
But altogether with the bland writing, and ugly artwork, I simply can’t find any reason to recommend this book, unless you are really hardcore dedicated Victoria Justice fanatic. Otherwise, PASS.
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