Sometimes when growing up we tended to think that our scene defined us; the skate kids would hang near the Cathedral, the goth (then eventually) emo kids would hit up City Hall – before going elsewhere, the chav’s would be at the parks and the punks would just be drunk. My home town of Belfast seemed like the scenes had all divided up their own territory and everyone mostly kept to themselves, I guess this was the same for everyone. Out of this vein of thought Rob Cureton came up with his Scene city Series starting out with the hilarious Impossibly Emo.

I have read part one a dozen times and each time I find myself laughing (according to Rob, the creator, I’m not even reading the best one). Scene city is a place where your scene defines you and every genre of music has its own dedicated areas. There really is something for everyone here; it’s light hearted and fun but really lets you stop and take a good hard long stare at yourself and be like damm was I ever this lame.

Issue one is about Horace. Horace loves Ska (who doesn’t?) But one night he makes fun of an Emo kid and wakes up the next morning to find out he has become Impossibly Emo. With the emo genre and style easy to poke fun of this is already set up to be funny and it doesn’t disappoint. My personal highlight is Horace in a desperate attempt to be happy and ‘not emo’ again goes to a rave, finding that not only is rave culture super friendly they also have pills, sadly these can’t even bring an emo out of his melancholy.

The art work is sharp and pretty awesome, reminds me of Scott Pilgrim, the style really helps add to the story.To help give it a better feel the author has even added a little ska track list in the cover, trust me check out these bands you will hopefully love them as much as me. This may sound offensive but it really isn’t, the series just picks on stereotypes of genres and how everyone can sometimes lose themselves in the things they love most, the ska kids come off as pretentious, the Rave kids seem to be on pills and overly enthusiastic and happy, its all a bit of good fun. So when going to read this book approach it with an open mind and you will just laugh from start to finish.

If you like what you see here you can check out our interview with Rob, which will up soon. In the mean time you can check out his website Orful Comics here.