Friday vol 1 by Ed Brubaker

Illustrations by Marcos Martín & Muntsa Vicente

​Friday and her childhood friend, Lancelot Jones, solved many mysteries around their small town. When it came time for college, Friday chooses a school out of town. The day before she leaves, she and Lancelot had an embarrassing moment that Friday dwells on for months away at college. Now, it’s the winter holidays, and Friday is home visiting family. Lancelot is on the case, as always, and she is swept up again in the same old routine of finding clues and solving the mystery. She’s dismayed that Lancelot is treating her just the same, reverting back to before she messed everything up. Something about this case is very different than the others, though, as there seems to be a mysterious spirit involved that Lancelot may know more about than he’s leading on. The case and clues really pick up, and Lancelot leaves traces letting Friday know to come back to their headquarters in the woods, but that’s when everything goes from bad to the absolute worst.

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The beginning of this story does start out rather slow and without much to make Friday or Lancelot beloved main characters, but Lemire uses lots of flashbacks woven within the present-day narration to shed some light into who Friday is. She’s a little tortured and mopey, which will probably be appealing for some readers. As this collects only 3 single issues (whereas most trade paperbacks collect 4-6), the story is just starting to warm up by the time the volume is over. The cliffhanger in this book is unbelievably brutal. Volume two won’t be out for quite some time, so it’ll be interesting to see why this was the break in the narrative that was chosen for the end of the first collected volume.

Image rates this for Mature. There is some language, some alcohol/smoking, and some scenes that could be intense or scary for some readers.

Sara's Rating: 7/10
Suitability Level: Grades 10-12

Publisher: Image Comics
Publication Date: November 9, 2021
ISBN: 9781534320581 (Paperback)

​Tags: Rating: 7/10, Suitability: High School, Comicbooks, Supernatural, ​Mystery, Image Comics