THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF RANGERGIRL

Overlong comic fantasia set in alt-lifestyle wonderland Santa Cruz, soon to be threatened by primordial evil from the next dimension.

The locus of all the trouble is Marzi McCarty, who works at Genius Loci, one of the college town’s many artist-infested cafes, and draws a psychedelic comic book called Rangergirl. When the town is hit by a small earthquake, Genius Loci regular Beej (who’s been acting a bit off recently) warns that it’s “a foreshock. Just a hint of things to come.” In short order, those things include the reemergence of the girlfriend of another café regular as a homicidal, mud-encrusted spirit of vengeance; the distinct possibility that all the murals decorating Genius Loci’s walls may hide deeper truths; and Marzi’s concern that some of the recent odd events mirror otherworldly things she drew in Rangergirl. For a while, the narrative seems more an ode to the wonders of sunny, laidback Santa Cruz than anything else as it follows around Marzi and a couple of friends who share her attractively low-key slacker lifestyle. But then that inter-dimensional barrier gets breached, and a poorly imagined elemental baddie threatens them all. It was a thin premise to begin with, and once the good-versus-evil battle begins in earnest, interest quickly wanes. This sort of inter-genre tomfoolery works only when it’s done completely tongue-in-cheek or on an epic level. Debut author Pratt has neither the sense of humor nor the imagination to make it work.

Moderately amusing, but fast wears out its welcome.