‘Fight Girls #2’ (review)

Written and Illustrated by Frank Cho
Published by AWA Studios

There’s a game within the game, as they say.

Such is also the case with Fight Girls #2, Frank Cho’s self-written and illustrated sci-fi fantasy of 10 women competing in an endurance trials to find a new queen of the Gilmoran Empire.

Could this be a Heavy Metal-style story of super-fit glamazon prisoners and the people pulling the strings? Sure, it could be that easy. But so far it seems that Cho wants this story to have more edge than titillation.

If only there were more there there to keep me interested.

The story picks up with just six of the women, the other four already killed in the first trial.

We go from last issue’s jungle to a desert filled with hidden perils.

Cho gets to flex more of his abilities drawing creatures and monsters as the women dodge to escape their clutches.

Meanwhile, some kind of covert government agent from the first issue is investigating Contestant No. 7, Xandra Blackwater of Deep Mine, Helgrave. A red-haired, working-class woman wearing an eyepatch. You’d presume she has one eye, but you don’t know.

In the narrative following the contest, Xandra is more than she seems, with his cunning and military training. As the book follows the agent, we find out that she may not be Xandra at all.

However, the book doesn’t spend enough time between both narratives for me to get invested. Maybe this would work better as a graphic novel rather than episodic issues? Because a serialized story can’t simply be one story cut into several pieces. Each issue has to have its own beginning, middle and end. I’m not getting that here.

The action is good, but we haven’t gotten much characterization with the women competing. And we get more voiceover from faceless TV producers and commentators that doesn’t further the plot in any way. It’s a far cry from the control room crew from The Cabin in the Woods, for example.

The art, as expected, is quite good, even though Cho draws each woman with the same face. Maybe that’s on purpose here, as some metacommentary on women in reality shows?

Either that, or I’m giving Cho too much credit.

Either way, I need for this comic to become more engaging, fast.