What a bad last issue. Poor Percio ends up doing something like four to eight panels a page to get all the story done and he doesn’t work well under pressure. Lots and lots of loose art. There’s a fight scene at the climax. A pointless one. Actually, wait, most of this issue is pointless.…

Well, Tomboy finally gets a proper name. But no lines. Lines aren’t important for anyone but the evil ladies working the clothes factory this issue. And the custodian girl gets a few scenes. It’s odd how Johnston brings things together from the first issue in the ninth. His sequential adaptation of the script is terrible…

More problems. Doll goes back to her old neighborhood and Tomboy shows her how everything has changed. Only Johnston–and Moore, he doesn’t get off the hook for this one–never showed how it was when Doll was there. There’s no passage of time; Doll could have been a model for a couple weeks, a couple months…

Percio gets Fashion Beast’s most thankless task… trying to make the characters act. With Johnston sticking to Moore’s dialogue and apparently unwilling to make it fit the comic medium better, Percio’s actually the one who has to make it work. This issue features the boss–the titular beast–unintentionally (one assumes) flirting with Doll. So Percio has…

The next big twist is predictable. It just had to work out the way it does–I guess there was one other alternative but Moore and company had done enough with gender. It makes the majority of the issue sort of superfluous. The real moment comes at the end when Doll becomes the protagonist again. Tomboy…

And this issue has another big twist. It’s hard to guess whether there are any more coming up or if the big surprises only come before the halfway mark. It’s hard to see where Fashion Beast is going in general. This issue has a handful of conversations, the bridging pages and not much else. But…

Besides Moore’s dialogue, the issue’s got nothing going. It’s four conversations with Johnston inserting filler between them. Doll and Tomboy argue about the outfit. Doll ends up seeing the boss about it. Tomboy and the custodian girl–who was supposed to be fired at the end of the first issue, I thought–have quick conversation, then Doll…

Ah ha, big plot twist this issue. Wonder if I should even mention it. No. The comic picks up from last issue with Doll running away from the mean lesbian (who doesn’t even have a name–her t-shirt says Tomboy so maybe it’s the most concise moniker) and getting beat up by protestors. People starving in…

See, there you go, I had no idea the protagonist–her name’s Doll–worked at a nightclub. I thought she was working for the fashion guy, but no. Big fail from Johnston on that one. This issue is a lot better than the last one, with most of the issue having Moore dialogue. There’s a nice expository…