Comic Review: Heavy Vinyl SC (BOOM! Studios)

It’s Heavy Vinyl, a trade from BOOM! Box. New Jersey, 1988. Chris has just started her dream job: working in a record shop named Vinyl Mayhem. All the cool girls work there, so she is excited. And nervous. But there’s more to the record shop than meets the eye.

This trade assembles the complete limited series, (Hi-Fi Fight Club 1-3, plus Heavy Vinyl 4) and is a really good read. It’s intended for Young Adult females.

The protagonist, Chris, awkward and unsure of herself, gets tossed into situations where she will need to summon up her nerve to keep her balance. And it’s not just physical; while the story revolves (ha ha) around a record shop, it reaches its arm out (ha ha) to other subplots.

For example, it seems there is something strange going on with boy bands! They are acting strange, certainly. And not just because they are boys, but it’s like they’re uh, hypnotized or something! Better look into that!

And what’s with the staff at the record shop, they are all very cool and confident young women. All except one, who is giving Chris a hard time. What gives with that?

There’s lots of great dialogue and touchingly earnest scenes that will resonate with young women. It’s more incluse than most: some story elements involve parents of same gender, young same-gender crushes, hopes, dreams and drama. It’s all good, well written entertainment.

Heavy Vinyl is created and written by Carly Usdin, pencilled by Nina Vakueva, and coloured by Rebecca Nalty.

Lots of variant covers and character sketch pages too.

BOOM Comics, Heavy Vinyl trade, $14.99 for 115(?) pages of content, Teen +