Matthew Bogart

Recommended by Caitlin G.

In the early years of the Internet, teens discover "BBS," a bulletin board system they can connect to - and connect to each other. That's where Allie meets Samir and they meet up and run away from her abusive stage magician father; and the Internet is also how Richard stays connected to old friends and makes a new friend/protector in the fierce Tina, who brings him to "Evol House," a haven for anarchist punks. It's the Evol BBS, too, that gives Allie and Sam the answers they need about the emancipation of minors, and the hope that Allie might not have to go back to a bad situation.

The art, like early computers, has a limited palette of black and white and blue.

See also: Mall Goth by Kate Leth, High Desert by James Spooner

"We need more information. We need research. Facts. Complex problems can always be solved with the right information."… (más)

I thought once the two storylines from the previous volume finally merged in its closing pages that this volume would be stronger for having all the characters together, but it just becomes a meandering tangle of familiar angst and misbehavior as their teen Eden at the Evol House proves to be a Neverland limbo with no Peter Pan or Wendy, just Lost Boys. And with everyone together in one place, the nascent internet angle that powered the first book past its boring bits gets dropped for large portions of this one.

The story just slowly fizzles, and then a big(ish) twist near the end falls flat, serving only to make a couple of panels in the previous book a darkly comic exercise in word balloon placement.… (más)

Set in the 1990s, teenaged early users of the internet use it to find friendship and cope with bullying and child abuse. A little slow and slice-of-life at times, but still engaging. I do wish the geographical settings of the two parallel storylines were a little clearer earlier on.

I like the occasional bits of ASCII art and the old-fashioned text-based user interfaces. Made me nostalgic for the day I first sat down at an internet-connected computer at college in the '80s, grumbling about the administration requiring me get an email address and wondering why anyone would want to bother with this ugly and useless green information exchange when all I really needed was more playtime with "Risk" and "Lode Runner" on my black-and-white Macintosh.… (más)