The Cute Girl Network, a hilarious and sweet rom-com graphic novel by Greg Means, MK Reed and Joe Flood hits stores today. It recounts the adventures of Jane, a smart, no-BS young woman who is the sole woman on her local skate scene; and Jack, a gawky, gormless slacker-dude who is completely smitten by her.
Jane and Jack meet cute one morning when Jane falls off her board in front of Jack's soup cart, and Jack gives her a bottle of iced tea to put on her butt to take down the swelling. As their romance blooms, Jane's friends reveal that they know Jack of old. He has dated several of them, with disastrous results, and has been added to the dossiers of the cute girls' network, a semi-secret organization of cute girls who keep tabs on dirtbag dudes and bros in order to keep one-another from repeating old mistakes.
But the more Jane learns about Jack, the more she realizes that he's just what she's looking for: she doesn't care if he's well-coordinated or tactful. What counts is his simple love, his good heart, and his devotion to her. The story of their love is sweet without being saccharine, full of great slapstick and romantic comedy. It's a romance in the vein of Kyle Baker's terrific Why I Hate Saturn (but without the chase scenes), and it's just the thing to cheer you up on a bad day. Skate-punk love has never been this adorbs.
The good folks at First Second, who published the book, were good enough to give us chapter one for Boing Boing — it's below the jump.
