Kiss #6 Review


KISS #6 concludes a two-part story that serves as an homage to the 1978 made-for-TV movie, “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park”, but with a gender swapping twist. Here’s the official description from IDW:

The girls (?!) in Kiss go up against the “phantom” Abner Devereaux and Christine Sixteen… and one of the Four-Who-Are-One won’t make it out alive!

KISS #6 is a major switch from the series’ earlier storylines, and not just in terms of the characters’ genders. Chris Ryall‘s plotting is very good, as the formulaic story of the first two arcs is finally upended a bit. He also delivers interesting dialogue. I say “interesting” because I hesitate to call it either good or bad. The majority of characters here are either teenage girls or robots built to resemble teenage girls, and the teenage girls who aren’t robots are filling a role we expect to be male.

This is a tricky subject to discuss, but let me explain: there are four male entities in this series who, in the first two story arcs, inhabited male hosts. Now they are inhabiting female hosts, and Ryall plays up those female elements to contrast this arc with the previous ones.

Because the female hosts are being taken to an extreme, for contrast’s and humor’s sake, and the robot girls are presumably programmed as stereotypes of teenage girls, also for humor, the dialogue overflows with female stereotypes. They all call each other skanks and b*****s, and, when they start losing the fight, “big meanie”. It’s like “Mean Girls”, but with KISS. And robots. It’s best to read it all from a humorous standpoint.

Great holiday shopping starts at TFAW.com!Wagner Reis‘ art is great, and not just because he can draw women, (although he can, most of the time). The lines are clean, and he’s able to keep control of a large number of similarly dressed bodies. The only flaws are that the necks are too long (the white make-up seems to make it worse) and one panel where Catgirl’s (that may not be the right name, but I’m going with it) hands are WAY too small. His backgrounds, however, are exquisitely detailed, the best we’ve seen on the series. One double-page spread with a line of sleep chambers is particularly awesome.

KISS #6 is my favorite issue of the series to date, as we finally get a sense of a greater story beyond simply watching the Four-Who-Are-One body-hop their way through time and space.

3.5/5

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