Tired of dark, brooding, angst-ridden vampires in blousy shirts? Perhaps Cherri Creeper is more your style.

Cherri is the creation of Holly Golightly, and on the self-indulgent first page of School Bites she explains how her aspirations to go manga were quashed by the unfeeling comic-book company that employed her, so she went independent. This is the result.

The star of this show is goth-girl Cherri, who wakes up in an alleyway dead, with skin newly purpled, teeth newly fanged and ears newly vulcanized. She isn't sure how to go about being a vampire, however; luckily, a bat arrives with an invitation to the Shadow Academy (yes, shades of Harry Potter), where just that sort of thing is taught.

Not much actually happens in this slim volume, besides the introduction of Cherri's instructors and her four roommates, with the promise of more adventures to come. Being manga, the characters all have big eyes and a tendency to flash their underpants; there's also minor nudity, making this book inappropriate for preteens.

Cherri appears to be irrepressibly cute, and I'll confess it's not really to my taste. But it's a fun little book, colorful, bouncy and aggressively cheerful, and anyone who likes that sort of thing will surely like this.

by Tom Knapp
Rambles.NET
3 February 2007