don’t get me wrong. i love avril lavigne, or at least i like her more than is normal for a graduate student. it began in my sophomore year of college, before i had noticed that i would go on being seventeen years old while everyone around me matured and shopped for breast pumps. i became inexplicably fond of the song “Sk8er Boi” and blasted it merrily through the dorm day in and day out. i thought it provided a welcome relief from j0hn mayer and jack j0hnson. others, perhaps, did not agree.
so imagine my delight when, in my daily round of tidying the library’s manga shelves, my eyes lit upon this two volume comic set starring avril herself!!
“look what i found!” i screeched to my fellow librarian, mr. e. he ridiculed me, and i took them home and read them. the first one was ok. hana loves avril. i can understand that. she also doesn’t have any friends and imagines avril climbing out of the poster on her wall to converse with her. i can’t quite understand that. hana’s parents are fighting, and she wishes everything in her life was different. so she does what any hip teen would do: she turns to the internet. buys a mail-order wish granting service. a few days later, a cute little red demon shows up in a box, and instructs her to break off his little horns and make wishes: 5 horns, 5 wishes. of course, things don’t really go the way she thought they would, but hana learns an important lesson about being careful what you wish for. right?
WRONG. (this is volume 2 now.) the little demon grants hana’s selfish wishes in increasingly bizarre ways, and three people die in a freak boiler explosion. hana survives but feels so crummy that she dresses up like avril and jumps off a bridge. her body is never found. the end.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?? booooo, hissy.
i should note that avril did not actually write/illustrate these comics, but presumably did agree to endorse the series. pretty heavy stuff for the singer of lyrics like “she’s like so whatever/you can do so much better.”
