I'd been waiting for this for years. YEARS. Ever since encountering Hopeless Savages Volume 2: Ground Zero by chance at the library, I've been in love with Hopeless Savages, so this was very anticipated, with all its delays.

Zero Hopeless-Savage, the youngest child of two former punk rock stars (Dirk Hopeless, a Sid Vicious-type, and Nikki Savage, kind of a riot grrl type) is a freshman in college and not having a good time. The one bright spot in her life is her upcoming tour with her band, the Dusted Bunnies! They encounter hangups with the jealousy of a rival band, and the fact that Zero's boyfriend Ginger's MIT classmates have hacked his phone to keep him from being in contact with Zero (he does all their classwork himself if he's missing her). And we also get a glimpse of Arsenal and Claude as struggling new parents to screaming twins, Twitch and Henry as unhappy participants in a touring ice skating act, Nikki and Rat dealing with an injury incurred on her revival tour, and Dirk at the bedside of a dying friend. The plot was funny and sweet, and it wraps up in the satisfying way you expect from Hopeless Savages.

The reason I gave it three stars instead of the five I wanted to give it, was the art. While cute and certainly competently executed, I felt it was too stylized and lacked the charm of the older books. Plus, there were many panels where I had a really hard time deciphering what was happening. It's often not clear which character is depicted or what they are doing. For example, Zero losing her phone is a plot point, but the art on that panel leaves a lot to the imagination about how that actually happens. However, the pages depicting the Dusted Bunnies performing are great, the artist really gets across the movement and expression of performance. ( )