Like the back said, Mean Girls was a bonafide 200s hit, so why not milk the cow and push out a sequel. And I’m not talking the disasterous sequel movie no one talks about.

Okay that was my cynical take when I first saw the ad for this comic, but now that I read it, it was not that bad.

Set during the senior year for Cady, and her friends, everyone’s determined to forget the World War North Shore of last year and enjoy a peaceful Plastic-free existance. Until Euro-transfer student Meghan Moretti hits the scene and she’s determined to take her place as the Queen Bee of the school. As she tells Cady in a passive-aggressive party invite, she’s not weak like Cady, she’s not going to relinquish control.

Cady intially wants to ignore it and focus on college acceptance but when Meghan starts targeting the former Plastics and engaging in the same bullying behavior as the originals, Cady and co. decide to strike back.

I enjoyed the callbacks from the Burn Book to Duvall’s bat to Glenn Coco (You go Glenn Coco) among other name drops. But what I most enjoyed was seeing the characters interact. They were pretty in character from Cady learning her lesson and trying to keep the peace to Karen’s bubbly dumbness and Ms. Nobury’s fumbling. Plus it had some new character interactions like Karen and Janis (Karen is a lot more into the friendship than Janis as ou can imagine. It’s hilarious) and Damian and Gretchen, allowing Gretchen to get a good pep talk. She really needs one. Plus she got a big win in the end. Even Regina returns!

One major issue is that it is too short. I think almost ten pages each chapter, and with only four chapters so just forty. It does a pretty good job synthesizing the bullying, the scheming and the attempted sabotoge with a nice denounment. But it also felt rushed. They saw months passed but it doesn’t feel like it. There are a few story threads that feel uncompleted or dropped like Janis’ dropping her relationship with Kevin G. and Cady’s long distance trouble with Aaron who’s at Northwestern.

Plus there’s some attempt at giving Meghan some sympathetic backstory but it’s only one panel, and one Ms. Nobury pep talk, but it can’t overshadow how mean she is even to her underlings.

Also there is one eregious anachronism where one underling Becks uses a hashtag social suicide joke, which wouldn’t make sense since this is set a year after the movie so it’s only 2005 and hashtags aren’t a thing. Otherwise, I think it was pretty in time with the original.

It was just too short. I think it could have been a good graphic novel, like 200 or 100 pages at least so everyone can get their share of development with space to breath. It felt most like the movie when they were scheming but again, it was too short.

Overall, the drawings were okay. I could recognize everyone especially since Karen got a kinder face, but I also wished for more detail too. Except for Gretchen. I could not place her at all, she looked totally different.

It’s a decent read if you’re into the movie, but also so light, it’s not worth a reread.