Zero Girl by Sam Kieth

Some creators consistently deliver detailed plots and realistic worlds and naturalistic dialogue. They make the suspension of disbelief simple, building worlds that make sense and connect to consensus reality and read as real.

But I'm here to talk about Sam Kieth today, so forget all of that.

Zero Girl was a 5-issue series from 2001 that wasn't collected until 2017; I missed it both times around. It was one of Kieth's first stories after he wrapped up his best-known property, The Maxx (for the first time - no creator ever really finishes their most popular work; they just put it aside until pressure builds too high demanding more new stories), and was not at that point connected to that universe.

I say that, but there's a clear Maxx Easter Egg in dialogue late in this book, and Kieth's afterword makes it clear that all his stuff is connected, as he learned, or built, after this story was done.

But it basically stands alone - I think the point is that there are later things that connect both to this and to Maxx - and likely in other directions as well, being as Kieth is all about the deep Jungian connections.

And, as usual with a Kieth joint, the premise is bizarre, the details are quirky, and the actions of the main characters often the worst choices possible assuming this was our normal world. (Which, of course, it is not.) Even the names can be difficult to believe, which brings me to our main character:

Amy Smootster is in her teens, a high school student in a place and a school that I don't think ever gets a name. She is a moody loner, stylistically and by nature. She is bullied by three other girls, who are the only other students at this school we ever see - they're equally '90s grunge types, but I suppose the more popular ones. Amy has a superpower, I suppose, in a very Kiethian way: her feet secrete some kind of psychotropic (or maybe reality-tropic) goo when she's embarrassed.

No, wait. Ashamed. Kieth is all about deep emotional connections and trauma, so it can never be the ordinary or garden version of any emotion: only the most powerful and personal.

She also has some kind of synesthesia - or, again, since this is Kieth, a deeper understanding of the nature of reality - in which circles are her friends and allies, while squares are enemies attempting to destroy her. And I mean literally: growing jaws, chasing her down the street, all that kind of stuff.

As if that's not enough, Amy also has a deeply inappropriate crush on her hunky late-20s school counselor, Tim Foster. And I'm sorry to say that both of them are mostly focused on the "we can't do anything about this attraction now, since Amy is underage...but maybe, in a couple of years, we could conceivably fuck." (Note: Kieth does not use the word "fuck." He's squishier and vaguer than that, as always.)

Oh, and Amy is also homeless, in a plot point that feels completely disconnected. She hates school, isn't doing well there, but the aunt she used to live with recently died so she's sleeping under a bench and...Keith is not about the realistic plots, so asking what she eats and how she washes her clothes and where she does homework is a useless endeavor. But it certainly seems like Amy has no reason at all to hang around this place and every reason in the world to go anywhere else - which I suppose is why Kieth has her crushing so hard on Tim, to give her some reason not to run away.

Kieth books always feel lumpy to me, in intriguingly unique ways, lurching from heavy-dialogue scenes in which no one addresses issues in the ways that would happen in the real world into psychedelic action sequences in which a character is chased out a window by his newly-ravenous mattress. It's like he has two modes: too-crazy talking, and too-crazy action. It's all too crazy; that's what makes it a Sam Kieth book.

Amy and Tim fight the Power of the Squares - that, minus my snark, is roughly the central plot of the series - and agree to meet again, in three years, when Amy will be eighteen and legally fuckable by Tim. (I'm sorry: that aspect of the book makes me cringe every single time it comes up, and I will not stop pointing out how deeply, deeply inappropriate it is.)

Sam Kieth is unique, and Zero Girl has all of the strengths of his work. I wouldn't call the ways it fails to intersect with actual reality weaknesses, exactly, but they are things to note, particularly for straightforward readers. If you haven't read Kieth, though, I'd recommend starting with a book that isn't so centrally about wanting to fuck an underage girl.