End of The World Adventure in ‘Topside’: Graphic Novel Review

The cover of this graphic novel, Topside is what first drew me in. The brief synopsis reeks of sci-fi and a possibly timeless message featuring a girl of color. I was intrigued and wanted to give this middle school appropriate book a go. Topside by J.N. Monk and Harry Bogosian (co-creators of the web-comic StarHammer) opens to one Jo Wilson in a dimly lit room peering into a brightly lit pod, signing off her shift as a repairperson. In the following pages, we learn that Jo is seen as a through, dependable worker. She’s a little too serious and when she puts her mind to it, headstrong. Going Topside Jo is a technician in a society that lives under the surface of her planet. Like so many of us, Jo lives in a society where infrastructures and systems are in desperate need of some TLC. She understands that she somehow contributes to the destabilization of the planet core, so she is swift to fix things as so much is at stake. Her working this particular day is the one action needed to proverbially burst the dam. What follows next is an adventure that takes her to the “topside” of her planet, a trip seemingly no proper person takes to find a fix for the problem that she accepts as her responsibility. Leaving her underground home means leaving everything she knows to a place that’s dangerous, unfamiliar and just maybe a bust for what she needs to find. Billed as a “wild outer-space fantasy about fixing your mistakes and the friends you meet along the way,” Topside lives up to that d…