Parsley Girl: Carrots Review

Parsley Girl: Carrots

Writer/Artist: Matthew Swan
Publisher: Avery Hill Publishing

 A review by Amelia Wellman

There’s something so captivating about a good comic book title. Something that will draw you in on pretty much oddness alone. Parsley Girl: Carrots is one of those comics. Who is Parsley Girl and what’s her problem with carrots? It’s something I had to find out.

Parsley Girl is having a tough day. She’s just had a tooth taken out by her weird dentist, her Robot is feeling obsolete, and there’s a mysterious puppy watching her every move. So it couldn’t be a worse time for a magical portal to open in her kitchen, allowing hordes of vegetable villains intent on vengeance to invade her village!

The story, as described above, is ridiculously hard to follow. There’s not much to go on as we see the characters jump from the dentist, to a robot that’s grocery shopping, to a monster carrot invasion, to an ancient wall of hieroglyphics that tells how to defeat the carrots. The main characters seem to have super powers and magic but it’s not really addressed. Nor is it ever addressed if the things that happen in this universe happen all the time. Is this a fantastical world? A world of superpowers? I’ll never know because the narrative just doesn’t seem to say. It’s cluttered, confusing, and hardly a story at all.

The art, while cute, colourful, and reminiscent of Adventure Time’s noodle-like art, is too fluid and just all over the place. I found it difficult to focus my eye on any one part of the page. Art that draws your eye across the page is good. Art that leaves you grasping for a story or constantly unfocusing your mind is not so good. It’s just absolute pandemonium as pictures are overlapping or melting into each other. This makes the already thin dialogue almost useless as your brain tries to comprehend the art and ignores the words.

The Verdict
Skip it. It pains me to say it because I really, really wanted to like this one, but it’s lacking in terms of substance. What could have been a very cute and funny story is a big jumbled and chaotic mess in both art and written word that I just couldn’t make heads or tails of.