Free Comic Friday: Barbie by Papercutz

Papercutz Free Comic Book Day #11: Barbie
“Fashion Superstar”
Writer: Sarah Kuhn
Artist: Alitha Martinez
Colorist: Laurie E. Smith
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Cover: Martinez and Smith

“The Secret of the Gems”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist/Colorist: Jules Rivera
Additional Colorists: Matt Herms, Matteo Baldrighi
Letterer: Cardinal Rae
Editors: Bethany Bryan, Beth Scorzato
Assistant Managing Editor: Jeff Whitman
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Salicrup
Released: May 6, 2017

With the “Barbie” movie in theaters now, this seemed like as good a Friday as any to revisit the 2017 Free Comic Book Day issue from Papercutz featuring a preview of two very different stories featuring Barbara Millicent Roberts, aka Barbie.

To be fair, I'm not sure if that's her name in the second feature. But I do have this theory that Barbie, in all her adventures where she's not clearly a doll, is the same character. See, in the 2011 movie “Barbie: A Fairy Secret,” it's established that Barbie is an actress, so even in movies where she's not named Barbie, it could just be Barbie playing a role. That would also explain her many, many, many jobs over the years.

Clearly, I've thought a lot about this.* Have I mentioned I have two daughters?

The older one is the bigger Barbie fan and watched a lot of her movies, which means I've watched a lot of her movies. And the themes in those are pretty well reflected in the entries in this sampler.

The first finds Barbie working as an assistant for designer Whitney Yang. She's helped her boss prepare for a major fashion show; all that's left now is to design her own outfit for the event. You'd think a fashion icon like Barbie would have no trouble with this, but this is early in her career.** Despite an encouraging playlist from fashion photography intern pal Liz or her doodling with special paint she invented to help her focus, her ideas just aren't coming together.

She falls asleep doodling on the fabric on her desk and is awakened the next morning by Liz. Barbie panics because she's go no outfit, but Liz is impressed by the design she's doodled. That's when Barbie realizes where she went wrong: She was trying to emulate her mentor, instead of finding her own vision like Ms. Yang preaches. She cuts the be-doodled fabric into a dress and accessorizes, ready to take on the fashion show and the rest of the graphic novel from which this is excerpted.

All in all, it's a pretty standard Barbie story, at least based on the movies I've watched and rewatched. There's fashion, friendship and a lesson to be learned about self-confidence. The idea of Barbie inventing her own special paints that can be used on any surface, primarily in the service of fashion, is weird but also pretty on-brand, emphasizing her well-roundedness. She's not just about appearances, you know.

The second story, by now-Marvel veteran Howard, is continued from the 2016 direct-to-DVD movie “Barbie: Star Light Adventure,” in which Barbie is a space princess named Barbie. It's one I didn't watch all the way through, or even much of, with my oldest, who told me recently it wasn't one of her favorites.

This story didn't make me feel like I missed out** or want to check out the full graphic novel, although, to be fair, I am not the target audience here. I feel like if I had seen the movie, maybe some of it would have made a little more sense.

It opens as Barbie and her friends return to her home planet Para-Den, I suppose from their adventures in the movie, where her father has prepared a meal. They decide to make it a picnic in the forest that her dad didn't notice was being clear cut by massive machines because it was foggy last week.

Barbie and her friends leap into action to stop the deforesters by tempting them with sandwiches, using gravity powers possessed by twins Sheena and Kareena to take the key out of the ignition of one of the machines and yelling.

Barbie's prince pal, Leo, refers to her as “Princess Starlight” and seems to think that will impress the workers, but it doesn't. They direct her to Ella Stellar, the head of Stellar Industries, and the comic refers us to the graphic novel for the rest of the story.

The art's not as distinctive as in the first segment, and the parts we're given don't do a good job of establishing the scale or internal logic of the story. I realize I just wrote that sentence about a comic based on an animated movie about Barbie in space, but I'm not demanding “Watchmen” here. Just wishing the sample was a little easier to follow. But I'm sure it's more than enough to let a young girl (or boy; there are male characters and it's space adventure sci-fi) decide if she (or he) wants to read the whole thing. If they didn't catch the interest of an alleged adult in his 40s six years after it was released, I don't think any of the creative team is going to sweat it.

My oldest was kind enough to read this issue as well, even though she's a bit outside the target demographic at this point. She reported it was “OK,” and she probably would have liked it when she was younger.

If you or a youngster in your life would like to read the full stories, they, and others, can be found on the free Hoopla app, available through many local libraries.

* - You should hear my Doc McStuffins theory.

** - But the fact that IMDb lists Dwight Schultz, aka Murdock from the A-Team, as a member of the voice cast kind of does.