Dennis Hopeless

While the comic has an extensive plot that is well-written, I did not like how the characters spoke to each other. They were rude and crude with each other which created a stressful atmosphere. That said, the author wrote a realistic portrait of this particular fringe group of hoodlums. The narrator was the son of Jody and Jeanne. Jody is the character whose brain was damaged in a car wreck. I feel that Jeanne should have left Jody long before she ended up with two rowdy kids. She is stuck accepting lousy, small paying jobs for the foreseeable future.

The story was inspired by the author’s family history. Dennis Hopeless stated in an online interview with IGN:

“When I was 3-years-old my mother started a chop shop with a half-wit junkyarder named Corn Dog,” said Hopeless in a statement. “Dad was the criminal. Mom had never broken a law in her life, but with him brain-damaged, fifty-thousand dollars of cocaine gone missing and hospital bills piling up, grand theft auto was our only hope.”

Hopeless continued, “She’s Running on Fumes is based on the true story of how my mom lied, cheated and stole her way through dad’s tire fire and the freedom she found out the other side. The story is based on family stories and my father’s near-fatal accident from when I was a toddler. As I grew older, details were added that made it clear my father was a criminal and many of the events of my childhood were driven by his criminal dealings. The seeds of the idea came from asking my mother about these old stories as an adult and getting the real dirt.”

The illustrations were drawn by Tyler Jenkins with watercolor art painted by Hilary Jenkins. The letters were written by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. The drawings looked sketchy to me but I believe that they matched the type of story that was told.… (more)

Dennis Hopeless has a good run chronicling the life of Jessica Drew, Spider-Woman.

The book starts poorly, as Drew is mired in a Spider-Verse crossover driven by Morlun and the Inheritors -- a multiverse saga I gladly skipped at the time. But even she is tired of all the cosmic superhero garbage and the book pivots to let her return to her private investigation career and become a street-level hero who gets involved in cases involving bank robberies, kidnapping, and domestic violence with the help of reporter Ben Urich and a reformed(-ish) super villain named Porcupine. Eventually, she becomes pregnant and the book really hits its stride as she copes with a baby bump while bumping bad guys onto their butts. Her childbirth is of course, appropriately ludicrous for a superhero, involving aliens and a black hole.

The Civil War II event makes an unwelcome intrusion, and toward the end an unnecessary romance is shoved into the book, but hey, it's all good as Hopeless leans into the amusing cringe of the relationship.

I regret I didn't get to this series earlier, but it's nice to have it all under one cover now (well, except for two issues that are part of a "Spider-Women" crossover sequence and collected separately).

FOR REFERENCE:

Originally published in single magazine form as Spider-Woman [2014-2015] #1-10 and Spider-Woman [2015-2017] #1-5, 8-17, with additional material from Amazing Spider-Man [2015-2018] #1.… (more)