Motor Crush Volume 1

This was AWESOME. First, I love the art style (which makes or breaks if I'll read a comic, no matter how good the story sounds). Dom is a total hottie and I want to be her and also be her best friend. There's illegal street racing and crazy biker gangs and a strange glowing substance that powers bikes and kills people and gives Dom super-human powers! There's some lesbian rep in here too. And a whole lot of mystery! That cliffhanger ending was killer. Also catball - so cute! I need to get volume 2 ASAP!

If you like racing and semi-futuristic stories and mysterious things and total babes, you need to be reading this.

A drug addict makes a series of increasingly poor decisions despite/enabled by her overprotective and codependent father and an amazing ex-girlfriend who is way more supportive and loving than she should be to such a self-centered jerk. Some science fiction-y motorcycle racing and possible alien encounters are thrown in for flash, but nothing here rises above the level of meh except the ex.

I loved so many things about it!

Domino Swift is a black lesbian. She's a badass. She's cocky. She races for fame and cash. And then she races again - to get a narcotic for machines known as Crash. Though the way she uses it differs from the standard significantly.

This is tied to a question Dom tries to find an answer to: who is she?? And, damn, I would like to find out as well.

The pacing is amazing! The story moves fast and we are held by the suspense at all times. Every turn, and there are some crazy turns, feels realistic within the story. There's nothing pulled out of thin air.

I'm a sucker for futuristic stories where the world is bright and colourful! So, I'm probably totally biased on this one but I love the worldbuilding. What show more can I say? I'm just tired of dystopias everywhere you look - give me girls with bright coloured hair and funny looking buildings instead!

And when we're on bright colours - the art is so pretty! Big part of the stoty takes place during night races and yet when I think of the art in this comic I think of bright colours.

Everyone who uses only 15 shades of black in their comic should see this one and reconsider. Please.

There were some great moments betweet Dom and her dad. I love their relationship. They love each other and support each other. Even when they quarrel. There's also Dom's ex-girlfriend - Lola. They still have some issues to solve but they're both clearly not over it. Dom values both of those relationships deeply but how her issues with Crush and looking for answers will affect them?

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Hmm … I’ve been wanting to read this for a long while (hello diverse wlw graphic novel plus the most amazing art style ever?), but after finishing this first volume I feel like my head is still spinning. And not in a great way.

Content warnings:
- none that I could find! There IS drug addiction, but only for the motorcycles themselves?

Representation:
- the main character is a black butch wlw
- her girlfriend is also sapphic
- there also a lot of other diverse character designs in here, like the protag’s father who’s black with a prosthetic leg

Domino Swift competes in famous motorcycle races worldwide. But that’s only by day. By night she races for the illegal drug called Crush that makes her bike faster than the rest of her show more competition. The drug can only be used on machines, though, unless someone has a death wish. At least that was common knowledge before Dom realizes her inhaler’s medication is filled with it. Naturally, she has some questions.

So as I mentioned before, the art style here is pretty great. I think it’s the graphic novel’s greatest strength -- it’s distinctive, expressive, and aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes, though, I feel the two main characters are a bit sexualized, with a lot of butt shots, shots of cleavages, of short shorts, etc., but that could really be my own prude-ishness talking.

Unfortunately, the plot lacks the same strength. It starts out fairly strong, with an almost Mad Max-like near (?) future world that revolves around racing and racers as idols. Domino is a second-generation racer whose career is jeopardized by her illegal Crush racing -- and she has a pretty rocky relationship with her ex as well. From there things get chaotic, and the plot splinters off into many, kind of strange directions. There’s an alien, time travel, and villains that are frankly laughable with cliched lines and motivations. By the end of the volume I’m left with so many questions that reading on to have them answered is almost not worth it.

We’ll see, though. Maybe if the library carries it at some point. The art style is pretty great, after all. show less

There's a lot to love here, but as the story went on I felt in greater and greater need of context...

"Crush" kills people who ingest it, but it gives Dom time-traveling super-speed? And she knew it would give her an edge of some sort, but not the sci-fi bit that goes with it? And aliens have been after her since she was a baby?

I dunno, the story felt great without those elements, and their inclusion just begged a bunch of mysteries that felt unnecessary. Can't wait to see where volume two goes.

Set in the city of Nova Honda, this comic tells the tale of Domino Swift a motorcycle racer whose adoptive father owns a repair shop and helps her out with her racing. She is an up and comer in a sport that is dominated by Decimus Wexler. At night she goes on illegal street races for crush, which is this pink liquid stuff that you put inside your motorcycle to make it run faster and is highly illegal, but everyone uses. She never loses.

At this particular race, the man who works for her dad is there and is killed for trying to steal the crush prize. When she gets home she finds that he stole her stash of crush as well. She is desperate to get it back and does something stupid to do so and loses her bike. She ends up going to her old show more mechanic who wants nothing to do with her, Lola. Lola has problems of her own as she owes money to the producers who run things. Lola does have a bike for Dom to ride though, and it's perfect.

Now Dom is being followed by a stranger who knows more about her than she knows about herself, like why she has to use her inhalers and what is in those inhalers, because she was in an accident and needed her inhaler and all she had was the crush and she used it and it worked, which would have killed any normal person. Soon Dom is doing something unthinkable to get them all out of trouble. This is a fast-paced book that keeps you on the edge of your seat asking plenty of questions that you don't get all of the answers to. I love the color of warm pink that permeates this comic, which is the color of the crush that seems to drive everything in the story. This is a fabulous start to a new series and I can't wait to read the next book. show less

The more comic books I read, the pickier I become. The plot is solid and the artwork very good but I find myself emotionally uninvested in our protagonist and her problems, as intriguing as they are objectively. Because this series is still ongoing, there’s no resolution expected anytime soon and that bugs me.