Mad Rupert

When her full-ride scholarship falls through, Molly Bauer hatches a plan to cover her financial aid gap. If she can start a softball team with the quirky students at her art school and win one game, she can get a retroactive athletic scholarship.

While the characters and art are good, the plot is simply too thin to sustain nearly 300 pages of diddling around. There are some attempts to introduce a villain and make a statement about gentrification, but nothing really gels there. A large show more portion of the book is simply Molly keeping her problem and plan a secret from her mothers, and I've just never been a fan of stories built around a big lie that will inevitably be exposed.

Also, the whole thing just reminded me of the funnier and livelier The Avant-Guards, Carly Usdin's series about an art school basketball team.

While this was disappointing, I've liked Ngozi Ukazu's other books and will certainly check out whatever she does next. show less

I really wanted to like this. The characters are so flipping adorable, and I like the general magical girl premise of it. But I feel this is definitely a comic intended for people already deeply familiar with the web series (which I didn't even know existed), and there was very little in it for me to connect with. The first chapter was very engaging and introduced the characters pretty well, but after that everything just fell apart. I am going to check out the web series, and maybe I'll show more revisit the book to see if I appreciate any of the chapters more after that, but overall, I was not impressed. show less

This book is so cute and queer! The struggles of financial aid are so relatable, even if you didn't go to an art college. I love the art style and the characters are so unique and hilarious. I've always been a fan of Ukazu's work, and this makes me want to explore more of Rupert's. I will be returning to this book a lot in the future!

I really wanted to like this. The characters are so flipping adorable, and I like the general magical girl premise of it. But I feel this is definitely a comic intended for people already deeply familiar with the web series (which I didn't even know existed), and there was very little in it for me to connect with. The first chapter was very engaging and introduced the characters pretty well, but after that everything just fell apart. I am going to check out the web series, and maybe I'll show more revisit the book to see if I appreciate any of the chapters more after that, but overall, I was not impressed. show less