Pages

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Username: Evie Review (Joe Sugg, Amrit Birdi)


Joe Sugg is a YouTuber whose videos I never saw until after reading his utterly craptastic comic, Username: Evie, but it turns out that he makes unwatchable videos as well as unreadable books!

Well, let’s amend that: he came up with the story but other people actually made this. I’ll credit them here because their names aren’t on the cover of the book they created: Artist: Amrit Birdi, Writer: Matt Whyman, Colourist: Joaquin Pereyra, Letterer: Mindy Lopkin. Joe Sugg just watched The Matrix, thought “Me too!”, and these guys brought his “vision” to life. 

I’ve never seen a female character literally fridge herself before but that’s one of the first things our main character Evie does! The story is riddled with high school cliches: the mousy wallflower girl, the geek guy, the jock, the mean girl. 

Then we get into the garbage story: Evie’s dad somehow creates (for want of a better word) the Matrix on his PC - right, because that’s possible for one seriously ill guy to do something that staggeringly technical! After he dies, he leaves Evie a laptop which is the gateway into the Matrix. All she needs to do is click the desktop app, look into the camera, and she’s PHYSICALLY transported into the Matrix! So idiotic. Mentally would be less stupid but physically?? And time passes far more slowly in the Matrix just because. 

Evie’s mean girl cousin gets into the Matrix as well but her mean girliness infects the NPCs (Non-Player Characters), turning them evil so Evie has to battle them all. What are the stakes? No clue. Maybe if you die in the game you die in real life but that’s never established so there’s zero tension in what’s happening. Cheesy, totally uninteresting good vs evil battle ensues. 

What was the geek guy doing in the Matrix? Was it him or just another NPC? How does her dad live forever in the computer?? 

The story is derivative rubbish that’s irredeemably bad all the way through - Username: Evie is like a bad CBBC show for 10 year old dullards. Avoid it like you’re probably already avoiding Joe Suggs’ terrible YouTube videos!

No comments:

Post a Comment