I don't normally read comic books, but something attracted me to giving Heavy Vinyl a chance and I'm glad I did. The art style is beautiful and works for the story. The characters have the potential to be great. And the premise is interesting and a nice subversion of the girl gang trope. I'm glad I checked this out. ( )

Cheesy, over the top, and a weird plot. I wish this had more issues, I am sure it would be 10x better if the author was given more time to flesh out the plot. Maggie and Chris are still a cute couple. ( )

I was staring at this comic while I was browsing the shop. I was only looking to buy single issues as I was low on funds but the staff member on the floor talked highly of it. Once she said how diverse and queer it was, I had to buy it. I don't regret my purchase since I always want to support anything LGBTQ related. Also, its published by BOOM! Box a division of Boom which published the Buffy comic which I loved. Needless to say I was looking forward to reading this today.

What I liked: The LGBTQ representation. The main character Chris is a lesbian who is crushing on Maggie. All the main characters are female which is refreshing! The nostalgia feeling I got while reading this. Since it takes place in 1998 a lot of the music references are from that 90's era and I was here for it! A bunch of vigilante chicks fighting evil doers is always okay in my book. The character Chris was my favorite, I enjoyed her awkwardness and her crushing on her coworker.

What I didn't like: This 1998 seems to be hate free which is extremely unrealistic. Nobody batted their eyes at Chris being openly gay, Maggie having 2 dads, or anything else. The plot seems a bit much. A bunch of record store employees are in a fight club, fighting the evil music industry? The last issue felt rushed and nothing is resolved. Why was the code put on the album? Whats going to happen next?

Artwork: Was amazingly drawn! It was neat and clean.

I'll probably buy Volume 2 if it ever gets released but I really want to see more relationship development between Chris and Maggie. I also want the plot to be a bit more clearer on who the villain is. ( )

Before we jump in here, I'm going to be honest about a couple of things. First off, I'm a child of the 1990's, so I was about the age of these characters during the Spice Girls and Portishead etc. I wore these clothes and watched these shows and a lot of my love of this comic is likely tied up in seeing myself in this book.

The main character, Chris, is a queer teenage girl with a crush on another girl who may or may not be queer. (She is, it's a romance, it's adorable!) I'm trying to think of a piece of happy media that featured queer girls that would have been available to me as a teen and I have nothing. Books in which queer adults die miserable? Plenty of those. Books with queer teens just hanging out and fighting the patriarchy? Nooope.

Chris is the newest employee at a record shop. She's also a teen who does teen things like attend school, do homework, develop a crush on a friend, and so on. The shop is scheduled to host a special show by her favorite band, Stegosaur, when suddenly, the lead singer goes missing! It's then that she's inducted into the "secret teen girl vigilante fight club" based out of the shop. The plot then follows Chris as she tries to figure out where she belongs within this group, deals with her feelings for Maggie, and solves the mystery. The characters in the fight club are a Black girl, Kennedy; a Puerto Rican girl, Dolores; and two white girls, Chris and Maggie. The leader of the gang is also white, but I'm not sure if she's a teen since she's the manager of the store. (I assume she's an adult.) The comic does the thing a lot of media has fallen into lately, where the group is diverse by having "one of each," rather than incorporating the reality that marginalized people usually hang together. I've forgiven it here because it's a group of employees, not a group of friends at school, but I did want to point out that I'm seeing it more and more in comics.

This was initially promoted as a 4 issue arc with a complete story, but the ending here is clearly leaving room for more story. I don't want to spoil the ending, but there's no way you could perceive it as being finished. The series also started under the name "Hi-Fi Fight Club," so I feel a bit yanked around by the series overall. What's your name? Are you a one-off or are you an ongoing series?

The art is really cute. The throwback 90's clothes, the backgrounds, the color palette. All good. Vakueva does a great job capturing the pure awkwardness that is the "is it a date?" stage of a crush, plus some action scenes. She has a style that's both distinctive and approachable, and it's a great fit for the series.

Overall, this is a fluffy queer romance story with a feminist music-loving punch-the-bad-guys bent. I really like it as a piece of YA fiction, even if the story ends in a way I wasn't expecting. ( )

A lot of unexpected things happened. Unfortunately none of it made sense to me. The reason why I don't give it a 1 star is because the art style is gorgeous and the characters have their moments.
But don't read this for the story.

Also it does feel like the author had an checklist for the diversity aspects. Even though I like seeing people from different walks of life, nuance matters. ( )