Hollywood chews people up and spit them out. Glitterbomb is a new comic in which frustrated actress Farrah Durante does the same thing to people trying to take advantage of her.
Released by Image Comics this month and Written by Jim Zub with art by Djibril Morissette-Phan, K. Michael Russell and Marshall Dillon, Glitterbomb doesn’t play coy with its premise at all. The first issue opens with Farrah at the end of a stressful day in the middle of a meeting with a sleazy talent agent, whose monologue makes it clear that her body — not her talent — is a product.
Earlier that same day, a casting call came up empty for Farrah. The single mum walked into the water at the beach, seemingly ready to end it all. But something else takes residence in her body.
When the sleazeball agent is done ranting, the entity inside of Farrah delivers her answer.
Zub does a great job of recreating the little cruelties and misconceptions that can kill a performer’s soul from the inside out. Farrah’s babysitter pesters her about meeting her agent and makes a crack about her having all that Hollywood money. During the casting call, a conversation with another actress seems like it might turn into commiseration or hard truths about feel-good platitudes.
But it turns mean really quick.
I’m eager to see the mix of horror and satire that Glitterbomb seems to be setting up. Farrah doesn’t display much guilt or shame at the death of her agent and it’s a fair guess that she may embrace the hunger of the otherworldly creature inside her to her own ends. But, even if Glitterbomb goes the “gleeful revenge” route, there’ll be an undercurrent of sadness underpinning it all, because it’s just a reflection of shitty behaviour that goes unchecked in the real world.
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