Motor Girl #1

How To Become The No. 1 Mechanic To Aliens Without Really Trying, or Motor Girl as they would have us call it, is a story about a girl. A girl who believes that the zombie apocalypse is coming, and that UFOs exist somewhere out there. Well she’s not wrong.

Publisher: Abstract Studios

Writer: Terry Moore

Art: Terry Moore

There’s something as a comics reader that’s easy to rely on, and that’s the knowledge that Terry Moore knows how to tell a good story. In fact, one needn’t even be a comics fan to appreciate what Moore has to offer because it’s so diverse and charming.

Looking at Motor Girl, we’re taking a very different turn from the recently wrapped up horror-thriller, Rachel Rising. It opens with protagonist Sam digging around a junkyard looking for car parts and her buddy Mike, who just happens to be a giant gorilla. Mike alone kind of sets up the type of story to be expected-- and that’s to expect the unexpected, but also don’t take it too seriously. Readers are going to be in for a ride, and the best way to enjoy it, is just to let it happen.

What Moore excels at anyways are his characters, Sam and Mike are no exception. Their first conversation reveals their humanity on so many levels; only a few pages in and Sam and Mike are nothing short of relatable, their concerns, their personalities, even if the reader has zero understanding of cars or any aspect of vehicular fascination that others seem to have, there’s something in the characters for everyone. Sam’s belief that zombies and aliens are just around the corner to taking over the world, Mike’s quiet disdain for people in general, her exasperation at people’s stupidity, his exasperation at her exasperation. Their general camaraderie is incredibly relatable, making it easy for readers to gain an instant relationship with the story about to be told. The investment in who these characters are and wanting to know what happens to them, happens quickly before there’s even much to go on. That’s the power of Terry Moore and his characters.

The art as always is clean, detailed, expressive, and like the characters themselves, so very human (if they’re meant to be a human character of course). Sam has soft feminine features, but none of the features are exaggerated in a way to make her appear more ”conventionally attractive” by comic standards. She’s beautiful as the protagonist but in a natural way. Supporting characters follow no cookie cutter build either and are all diverse as we see in our own world, another way Moore manages to draw us in so well so even if a character isn’t given a lot of panel time, so much of who they are is shared in their appearance.

As for the story, it’s quirky and fun and like always a different departure from other stories Moore has told. Of course there’s going to be more to it, it seems like Sam has quite the back story-- three tours of duty, one of which led to being captured for a year, she’s going to have some issues to work through, but to balance out Sam’s story and her struggles, there are some great comedic relief moments. There are a couple times that are definitely laugh worthy with Moore’s offbeat storytelling.

The idea that a girl like Sam and her gorilla pal can set up shop as a repair station for passing extra terrestrials is certainly unique, and it’ll be exciting to see what adventures are in store for them.