Review: The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl

"The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl" by Barry Lyga feels like a fanboy dream novel at first but quickly turns into a pile of hot steaming turd when you're halfway into it. I read it a couple of weeks ago and my wife is reading it now. Like all other novels featuring ostrasized geeks as primary protagonists, the book celebrates and examines the outsider status of a comicbook geek (i.e. Fanboy) and his ongoing sufferings under the boot-heels of Jock Jerks in school. In comes the obligatory smart girl with an attitude (i.e. Goth Girl) and they both hit it off. Fanboy has a comicbook that he's working on and he's hoping to show it to Brian Michael Bendis who is coming into town for a mini con. Goth Girl has issues and hides her breasts within loose clothes and cigarette smokes - she also appears in a new car every chapter. Fanboy comes up with some silly turtle-theory to explain the Great Depression and his stupid teacher (as teachers usually are) totally buys it. Those are the interesting bits of the book. If you grew up as a geek, you'll identify with the protagonist of the book in a special and intimate fashion.

Then the book goes downhill. No real exploration of the characters' personalities, motives and drives beside the cliched and caricature-styled depictions. I think the book really suffered after Fanboy's meeting with Bendis. It's like the book was building up to that point but when you finally get there, you go - "Huh?!? That was it?!?" It's like Dorothy going all the way to the Land of Oz and when she finally meets the Wizard, he turns out to be the school janitor. Or like Darth Vader telling Luke in "Empire" that he's actually the hotdog seller outside Luke's mechanic shop in Tattooine and that he had a "thing" for Luke's mother when she used to work as a stripper in Jabba's Swingers Club. In fact, it's not even half as interesting as the last reference there. I would totally want to visit Jabba's Swingers Club. But Barry Lyga just couldn't hit any right notes 3/4 of the way into the book and so the story had to end on an anticlimactic note.

This book has garnered tons of praises since it was published. Truth be told, any fanboy could've written this book. You just have to kick in some of your autobiographical stuff and mix it in with lots of name-dropping from Bendis to Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman, and people will think that you've written a really good teen novel that examines teen angst and the dark shit that we all struggled with as underaged geeks who sucked in sports but were simply too smart for our own good. Phew! We all grew up that way and we exulted in our outsider geek status. We'd get into some tussles with Jock Jerks sometimes but nothing so serious that we'd work out a List of people to kill and walk around with a bullet in our palms like a talisman. Speaking of The List, did Bendis steal that idea and used it for Norman Osborn in his "Dark Reign" arc? Come to think of it, maybe Norman Osborn was a geek who got bullied in school as well. Maybe Fanboy grew up and became Norman Osborn and plotted to take over the world and destroy the biggest nerd in the universe who managed to out-geek him, Peter Parker!

In conclusion, Barry Lyga's book is good for a weekend read. The pleasures derived from reading it are mostly limited to the way in which you (if you're a geek) find yourself mirrored in the novel. Other than that, it's a totally forgettable read that ranks even lower than "I Love You, Beth Cooper". In time, this book will probably be referred to as the uninteresting and unsexy second cousin of "I Love You, Beth Cooper"!!!