Advanced Review: ‘Street Angel Goes to Juvie’ Turns a Week in the Slammer Into a Vaycay

Writer: Jim Rugg, Brian Maruca/ Artist: Jim Rugg / Image Comics Street Angel is a weird series. It features a young girl known as Jesse “Street Angel” Sanchez, an orphan whose background includes skateboarding, martial arts, and fighting ninjas – in that order. She’s rescued the mayor’s daughter from a supervillain, fought Satanists with the help of Jesus, and prevented time traveling pirates from getting into a brawl with ninjas. Yup weird. Yet, there’s something intriguing about this protector of the poor and forgotten.

Surprisingly, you’ll get none of that in this book. The latest addition to the saga of Street Angel takes the deadliest girl alive to juvie for an adventure that is ironically a lot tamer than some of her others. In fact, Jesse is sporting a positive attitude, a sharp contrast from the all-business demeanor she sports in earlier books. You would think that with a title like Street Angel Goes to Juvie, we would be getting a book about our ninja-fighting heroine having to survive the rough realities of prison. Instead, we are treated to a story that is surprisingly more lighthearted than I thought it would be. It’s actually really fun to see the usually straight-laced heroine take juvie in stride. She carries most of the book with her optimism and completely makes prison her own. Her positivity is infectious, too, as she quickly makes friends and somehow makes lock-up a better place. Jim Rugg’s scratchy art style also adds to the feeling that Jesse is having …