Review by Aurorealis
I found it fortuitous that my sister had grabbed The P.L.A.I.N. Janes because about 2 weeks before, I had stumbled onto an interview of the author, Cecil Castellucci, on CNN.com (I clicked on the link that read something like “Girl who likes boy stuff writes comic” – it grabbed me). So I snuck away with this comic before she gave it to our 13 year old niece, who is part of the age group the book is geared towards.
It’s a simpler style comic – sort of like the Archie ones – set in a high school, with straight black and white lines and uncomplicated artwork. Again, we don’t live in Archie’s world anymore, and the story line is colored with our current tumultuous world events. When we first meet Jane, she’s blond and popular and walking the streets of the Big City (here called Metro City) when there is a terrorist attack (likely a bomb but it’s never explicit). Living only minutes outside of Manhattan, I could identify with her panic right away.
Jane’s paranoia stricken parents move her hundreds of miles away to suburbia (a teenager’s hell, after all). The attack changes her, and in that change she feels the need to change her appearance, and she cuts and dyes her blond locks jet black (a faux pas her city friends mock her for, especially since her parents are hairdressers). Her hardest goodbye is for a comatose John Doe she helped save at/after the attack. She takes his sketchbook – his only identification – with her and writes him letters of loneliness and draws in the book to continue his work.
At her new school, Jane thwarts attempts of the Cool Crowd to sit at their lunchroom table and makes several rebuffed attempts to join the outcasts – all who happen to share a common name denominator: There is “Brain” Jane (blonde, shy, nerdy girl with glasses and a mental library of all things quantum), “Theatre” Jayne (a Rosie O Donnell doppelganger with a sarcastic meanness) and “Sporty” Polly Jane (tall, gawky, and ever determined to start for the numerous sports teams she’s the benchwarmer for). I immediately liked the name connection, being a Heathers fan myself, and even more so since Jane reminded me of Winona Ryder in her teenage film heyday.
Our Main Jane finally lures the other Janes in by creating an underground artistic group: People Loving Art In the Neighborhoods, or P.L.A.I.N. It’s sabotage in the name of art, and they concoct such stunts as bubbles in the town fountain, asking people to adopt stuffed animal pets, gift-wrapping monuments, taping bottles onto a tree with messages in them to “sing” or “dance”.
What is most interesting about Jane is she does the opposite of what most of us dreamed to do – she goes from being popular and worrying about her favorite lipstick being lost to embracing teenage isolation, which most of us were forced into rather than choosing. Yes, she wants friends, but she wants to choose the friends, and she wants to be an outcast. Cindy, the class queen (think Lead Heather) continually tries to recruit our main Jane into her clique. Jane prefers being (to borrow Cindy’s word) a “reject”. She sums it up with my favorite line in the book (and something I’ve felt so many times in my life, even now): “The truth is, no matter how normal I try to be, I still sometimes feel like a shadow”.
There is a prevalent feeling of unease and rebellion throughout the book. Jane’s mother constantly calls her to remind her where she will be, and her parents’ overall paranoia raises the suspicion that P.L.A.I.N. members are artistic terrorists, establishing the notion that other terrorists could hit this town that was supposed to be their safe haven. But this book follows the basics of Teenagedom – crushes and broken hearts, friends found and lost, identities being established. And, above all, the connections that all teenagers have – popular or not – in wanting to be a part of something bigger. As the adults hold assemblies and hand down curfews and groundings, the students embrace P.L.A.I.N. and their antics.
I wish I could be as courageous as these girls, and get everyone at work to all start singing a song at noon one day. I know when winter rolls around I’m going to want to wrap up the fire hydrant across the street from my house in a knit cap and scarf. I finished the book wanting to be a Jane.
Although I am pretty sure this was a stand-alone graphic novel/comic book, since it does have resolutions and a mainly closed ending, it’d be a shame not to revisit with these girls and what P.L.A.I.N. could do for college, and for the world. All I can say is, if they’re recruiting, count me first in line.
The P.L.A.I.N. Janes is written by Cecil Castellucci and illustrated by Jim Rugg.
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Wow! Your review really has me intrigued. I’ve seen this cover in the comic stores, but never looked into it….now I’ll have to pick it up. Thanks!
yeah. I read this a few weeks back and totally wanted to take some of their P.L.A.I.N. art attack ideas, the messages in the bottles were so fun : )
A friend and I once created posters for “lost pets” that were actually everyday household kind of things. Like a staplegun that we named “Thumper” We plastered them all around random neighborhoods. It was such a blast, I recommend it to anyone.
According to a DC Comics rep at MoCCa, there will be a follow-up to PLAIN JANES within the next year.
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This book sounds really adorable. I’ll be certain to check it out. Thank you!
Just to let you know…There’s going to be a sequel! It’ll be called “Janes in Love”.
Yay para Jane sequel!