Paper Planes

by Jennie Wood, Dozerdraws, Micah Myers

Genres: Graphic Novels
Pages: 216
Rating:

Synopsis:

After a life altering incident, Dylan and Leighton are sent to a summer camp for troubled youth. Can Dylan and Leighton save their friendship and protect their future while trying to survive camp?

Former best friends Dylan Render and Leighton Worthington attempt to successfully navigate their way through a summer camp for troubled youth. They both need a good evaluation at the camp. Otherwise, they’ll be sent away, unable to attend high school with their friends. While participating in camp activities and chores, Dylan and Leighton rexamine the events that led up to the incident that sent them to camp, the incident that threatens their futures and their friendship with each other.

Jennie Wood’s Paper Planes was a bit of a random choice for me, something about the cover design and learning it was a queer story with an asexual character made it seem like it might be my thing. It’s YA, but I tolerate that better in graphic novel form, and with queer stories (which often play out similarly for adults, let’s be real).

Leighton and Dylan are sent to a camp as punishment for some kind of big deal situation where they both got in trouble, and over the course of the story we slowly learn how they became friends, what their friendship is like, and what it is exactly that they did. It’s a very messy teenage story, with bullies and stupid crushes and mismatched expectations about what a kiss means, and it doesn’t end in a neat and tidy way.

My main problem with it was that Leighton is not a likeable person a lot of the time, neither in the past nor the present. She’s deeply privileged and expects to get what she wants for the most part, though has major angst about her parents’ expectations and demands on her. This would be easier to sympathise with if she treated the people around her (including Dylan) a lot better. It’s not clear why they’re friends, really. Even in the present timeline, when we find out why Leighton’s behaving the way she is… it’s hard to entirely sympathise with the way she goes about it and the mixed signals she gives. (If you can’t be friends with Dylan anymore, stop throwing paper planes at them and trying to separate them from others who might be their friend.)

Dylan’s treated more sympathetically for the most part, though it doesn’t help that it’s unclear why they’re so attached to Leighton.

Overall, messy and teenage in a way that’s pretty realistic, but not the most enjoyable thing to me. I did find it interesting that it doesn’t neatly sort things out at the end: there are loose ends, and while Dylan’s settling in and looking a bit happier, it’s unclear that much is changing for Leighton. That makes it pretty realistic.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)