A while ago, I deaccessioned a lot of my comics/graphic novels, and now years later am reaccessioning the ones that I realized I really do want. Kimmie66 is one of those. I am a lifelong fan of Aaron Alexovich’s other series, Serenity Rose, and this is in somewhat of the same vein tonally. Kimmie66 is set in a near future where there are immersive VR worlds (“lairs”) that people spend large amounts of their lives in. Telly is 14 and her lair is Elysium, a goth magic realm. Her friend Kimmie sends her a suicide note and Telly is desperate to figure out if Kimmie is still alive or dead, which sends her on a search through other lairs.
This is a surprisingly dark book to have been marketed and aimed at high schoolers, but I read this in high school and really loved it. It continues to be important to grapple with suicide and other serious topics in YA. As an adult re-reading it, I was struck that the reason for Kimmie’s death is never explicitly explained, which works very well in terms of focusing the narrative on the emotional fallout for family and friends. The worldbuilding is also interesting to me, although I continue to wish this was a series and it could have been fleshed out more. The ethical consequences of some of the decisions made here are also quietly horrifying and get kind of brushed under the rug narratively, but these were short books so there might not have been room to explore them. This was part of the Minx line of graphic novels aimed at teenage girls that DC did in the early 2000s, which was an idea that was prescient and ahead of its time. In the next 10 years, I think the market will be calling for more YA graphic novels like this as the generation primed by the middle grade graphic novel boom grows up.
Warning for suicide and the dead body of that person is shown.