Reading: THE AVANT-GUARDS VOL. 1 - Carly Usdin (writer), Noah Hayes (illustrator), Rebecca Nalty (colorist)

Filmmaker Carly Usdin is the driving force behind this graphic novel - composed of the first several issues of the popular comic - that opens with a young woman named Charlie trying to find her way as a new transfer student to the Georgia O'Keeffe College for Arts and Subtle Dramatics. The campus of focused, arts-oriented and creative students is foreign territory to Charlie, a former basketball star in her previous school days now seeking a new career path, and as she finds herself struggling to make friends and make her way, the young woman, quite ironically, runs into a short, cute, very hyperactive African-American girl named Liv. Liv is everything Charlie isn't - outgoing, open, energetic, a true lover of life and all it has to offer. Where the ironic parts comes in? Liv also happens to be the captain of the Avant-Guards, a motley crew of athletes and non-athletes Liv is determined to turn into a crackerjack basketball team so that their school has some representation on the courts. Liv's also determined that the one player they need to make a full team is Charlie, who resists every temptation to join at first - that is in her past - though she soon falls under Liv's perky little spell and reconsiders helping to get the team off the ground. The Avant-Guards Vol. 1 has a lot of positive energy and some terrific LGBT+ representation all across the board, with individual characters you grow to like. My problem with this compilation is simply that not a lot seems to happen, dramatic conflict kept to such a minimum I found myself (a couple times) checking how many pages I had left to read until I was finished. A budding romance toward the end livens things up considerably - as does a seeing the Avant-Guards in action on the court - but overall, while not bad by any means, volume one of this series just feels like a bland prologue whose purpose is to get you to the cliffhanger at the end, setting some real wheels in motion for volume two.  3/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.