I did not read the New IDW Jem Comic Books at first due to the cost of them. I don’t want to own paper comics as they waste space. I recently found that if you get an subscription to ComiXology (which is owned by Amazon) you can read the Jem and Misfits Comics in just one month. Hopefully you will remember to cancel the subscription before you have to pay for more then one month. I started to read the first Jem Comic, but I found it depressing. I have only read just the beginning of issue one, is making me feel fat to see them being fat at the young age of 22. Considering that most Rock Stars in the 80s did cocaine and speed to stay thin, these young fat characters are not realistic. Madonna, Blondie, and Dale Bozzio (Missing Persons) were all thin and in shape. The only singer I can think of who was not slim in the 80s was Debora Iyall from Romeo Void.
I don’t want Jem to be a tool for body acceptance. Jem and the Misfits are fantasy characters. The fun is pretending that one is as glamour as they are. I don’t want to be forced to face real life issues in entertainment. Entertainment is escapism. What if they created a new comic for Sailor Moon where half of the Scouts and half of the villain ladies were overweight? It makes me think about dieting. It fills me with dread and guilt.
I don’t like the new hair styles in the Jem Comic Books shaved on the sides. This was an 80s fad, which was very ugly at the time and a part of Punk Rock and not New Wave. Jem is New Wave. The Jem Comic should have stayed closer to the original characters in the original time period.
In the early 2000’s a series of dolls that were created to look like the Dawn Dolls from the 70s. They aimed the dolls at bring in new younger collectors instead of pleasing the people who played with these dolls as children. Unfortunately the doll company (Checker Board) when bankrupt because girls no longer wanted to collect and play with Dawn dolls. They should have just stuck to trying to please older collectors using the nostalgia angle. If the writer of the Jem Comics wanted to create a group of overweight rock singers, why did she not create her own characters?
Love and Rockets by The Hernandez Brothers showed two young ladies who became a couple named Maggie and Hopey. Maggie gained weight while Hopey remained slim. I did not mind this because these were original character who were not marring my impressions of the original characters. I can accept the weight gain of Maggie because she is an original character and that was her original weight.
I also found some strange Jem comics online which show Jem and the Misfits as being the age they would be now in current times about 53 years old, and they had gained weight. It is more reasonable to have them gain weight at an age when many older celebrities have gained weight, such as Mariah Carey. In these satire Jem comics, Jerrica refused to appear anywhere without having Synergy to make her look young and slim due to the weight she had gained. Even Pizzazz had gained weight by age 50, and she had married Eric!
I have purchased better comics such as Manga in English and the Freak Brothers from ComiXology, because they cost money and are not a free read with the subscription. The lack of popularity for the Jem Comics is what makes them one of “Free Reads”. This is the same as buying Kindle Unlimited reading subscription. The books that are popular always cost money. The ones that are unpopular are the free reads. One Amazon Prime, only the shows that no one wants to see anymore are free viewing. All the newer and better show cost money. I think Amazon uses an algorithm to determine which books, comics or movies people are willing to pay for and which ones such be free based on overall sales and popularity. This means the Jem Comics are fairly unpopular. If you want to agree or disagree, please leave a comment.
Updated: I am still trying to finish all the Jem Comic Books so I don’t get stuck paying for more time with ComiXology Unlimited, but on the iPad I can’t change from one book to another. So, I am stuck in one book, and when I try to click off that book, it merely goes into double tap view. Double tap view gives you a chance to read the small printing writing. So, I have an Android tablet, and I am trying to read the Jem Comic number one. I had reached the point in which Stormer and Kimber are developing their friendship, which happens much earlier in the comic series then on the TV show. So, I am like well, this is pretty interesting, but now the double tap view does not work. Once I passed the first dividing page, the double view stopped working and I have to pinch to enlarge and read. I am going to try and save this for being on a plane or something. I feel like I should save them up for a time in which I really devote time to reading all of them. I don’t know what to do. It would be better to pay for them rather then just get sucked into a subscription with this many technical flaws. But, I don’t want to spend money when ComiXology has so many bugs and flaws. Maybe once it get fixed I will either buy them or read them under subscription. Its still enough like Jem to merit being interesting, even if its not exactly like Jem. I just don’t want to buy paper comics because I know what will happen. I will buy a physical and put them away least they become damaged and never look at them again.
Updated: I completed reading all of the comic book by Sophie Campbell based on Jem and the Holograms and the story line was not as bad as I anticipated. There are a few other Jem Comic by another artist where all the characters are chibi sized, but I was not interesting in reading those. What I really liked about the changes to the Jem story was making Jetta Black as she was intended to be originally. I did not like the characters weight gain. I don’t like having a new character called Blaze who is a friend of Clash. Video is supposed to be the counterpart to Clash. Clash and Video are cousins. Clash is not supposed to have any friends which is why she hangs around with the Misfits. I don’t know if Sophie Campbell really studied the original series carefully enough. It can’t be that I have more knowledge of how the Jem Universe is supposed to work then someone who is paid to understand it.
Once I realized I had finished all of the Sophie Campbell Comics I was upset that there was not more comics to read in the series. In spite of all my complains (which are only mention to cause improvement) the story barely gets off the ground before it ends. There is a lot more to the Jem story. I don’t know if the comics had more issues planned and were cancelled due to unpopularity. If they were unpopular it was likely due the difficult situation in which they were not easy or inexpensive to get. Hopefully having the comics on the ComiXology App will encourage more people to read them.
At the end of the book I was able to read the character bios and the pet hates. Many of them involved hating some kind of animals, for example Kimber hates fish, other characters hated rats, spiders and snakes. This shows an immature attitude and ignorance about how these animals have a place in the Eco system. None of the songs they played were original songs, but sort of cut up pieces of songs, for example the Misfits Sing “Gimmie the Rush”, instead of “Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie. ” The main premise of the beginning is a battle of bands in which the audience votes for the band they like best. The Misfit became almost a Gothic rock horror band, but they dressed more colorfully. I can’t see the two band competing with each other now that they have become so different in music styles. Jem and the Holograms are still pop music, but people will either like or vote for which ever genera they prefer.
Updated again: I found a little bit more of the series present on the app, but its hard to find because I have not read the chibi comics which have a different storyline. The new book or books go into the story of Blaze. Now they have swung way off course from the original storyline. Eric has been introduced. But I am about ready to give up on the series, I will read all that is present at least, but I could not see buying any of these other comics has the story is so different. Blaze is apparently replacing Piazza in the Misfits.
Updated again: Jem meets Infinite Jest when Synergy either become evil or has an evil twin with a different name. Evil Synergy turns Jem and the Holograms into zombies who now play dark wave music. Now Jem and the Holograms are now more able to compete with the Misfit who are have also become a dark wave band. I was able to find notice after looking for a very long time, that the series is completely over with Hasbro taking back the rights to Jem. The comic book seems to be self indulgent version of Jem and the Misfits moves completely off the original story line. By the time the Stingers show up along with three more new characters I was literally falling asleep with boredom. Nothing really happens with the Stingers and I am not a fan of the Stingers, but I assume more was planned to happen, but the series was cancelled. Maybe they should have just become a minimalist Emo band like the Limp Lizards?
Macy Makes Magic 