Dec 30, 2024

Groupies #3 Review (Comixology)

About Groupies #3

Writer: Helen Mullane

Artist: Tula Lotay

Colorist: Dee Cunniffe and Tula Lotay

Letterer: Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Tyler Smith

Published: Comixology

Release date: December 17th, 2024

Logline:

The girls get their friendships back on track, just as Si is going off the rails. As the band’s star rises, their behaviour gets ever more erratic. The crew pick up a hitchhiker and they share a bizarre trip.

Where can I read Groupies #3?

Groupies is available exclusively on the Amazon and Kindle stores as a Digital Download to your favourite e-reader device.

Groupies #3:

Helen Mullane continues her tale of folk Americana as a group of hippies, intrinsically tied to a rising rock band, continue to navigate their own friendships, the rock n roll stars they sleep with and the drugs they share.

With Si, one of the band members rising early to go to a label meeting, the girls are left with several hours to kill and take some acid to pass the time. Leading them to climbing a tree and envisioning themselves as mythical dryads occupying that space. During the trip, Gaia visualises the tree as dark and menacing, projecting bad thoughts and negative imagery. Putting it down as just a bad trip and knowing they running late, they make a run for the bus.

Si, blaming Lisa for their lateness, slaps her and the other girls rally around her as they tell him to back off. On the way to the next gig, they pick up a beautiful hitch hiker and they decide to get high with her at the show and party afterwards. It’s during this time that Gaia begins to have a bad trip and dreams bordering on the demonic. Waking up in some bushes, not knowing how she got there. The colouring in this scene is incredibly Lynchian. Bringing to life this surreal horror that is consuming and feels addictive. It’s a true brain melt moment, personifying a bad trip onto the pages of this story.

When the other girls find Gaia they decide to take her back to the location and where she dreamt of: an empty motel room. However, as she begins to believe it’s just a dream she realises that she’s holding a leaf. A remnant and souvenir of what she pulled out of the nightmare she experienced.

The combined talents of Tola Lotay and Dee Cunniffe create what looks like a melting canvas of water colour paints. This adds to the surrealism I mentioned earlier and creates the illusion of a visual acid trip. But at the same time it makes the Groupies look eloquently beautiful. The skin and eye work, specifically, is a scene stealer in every panel, on every page. When paired against the darkness of Gaia’s bad acid trips you get an otherworldly combination of lights, sounds and colours. A prog album that won’t quit. Creatively, this exists in the same space as Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway. I cannot recommend this enough.