I'm always looking for books that are engaging or educating or hopefully both for YA students. Call this one "engaging" -- but not for my students. Downloading this was a nostalgic trip for me, not for my classroom.

I was fully expecting to dislike this new iteration of Barbarella as a rehash of the original. The same ole, same ole repackaged for the modern audience. After giving the graphic novel a chance, I found that instead, it was interesting, fun and captivating. Barbarella has grown up and changed with the times. Yet in many ways she is still Barbarella. This book draws interesting and important parallels to modern body politics and Barbarella owns her sexuality in a way that she never has before. Overall I found this book delightful. It has its flaws but all in all I can overlook those because I found Barbarella and her plot wonderful.

Barbarella is back after 55 years we are led to believe. However as a young man watching the 1968 film with her name, starring Jane Fonda, this space heroine, has never left my subconscious.
Here we are treated to a comic presentation of Barbarella whose very nature supports all that a graphic novel can bring to any story.

This volume, Vol.1, is in four parts. A complete story makes up the first 3 parts and the final part is an unrelated one. An adventure with sex and treachery drawn by another artist. I prepared the first adventure and overall presentation.

Barbarella's world is a vivid, colourful one with unusual creatures and strange alliens. The most enticing character is Barbarella who oozes sex appeal and fills every page she appears on, in the delightful novel. A cosmic astronaunt, she is a campaiging, evagelistic crusader, with a high-moralistic view against violence and cruelty. Yet she is a passionate woman who has no restrictions on sharing pleasure and enjoying all that the universe has to offer.

Plunged into a conflict and judged a harlot because of sexual libido and her intact reproductive system, she forges an alliance with a earth spy while incarcerated in a maximum security prison.

Breaking out to try to save the earth from annihilation by some doomsday weapon, but nothing is very straightforward in Barbarella's world and she needs to really on all her assets and qualities of self preservation to overcome, especially when duplicity and betrayal are thrown into the mix.

A thoroughly entertaining read, full of colourful exploits and classic set pieces. A larger than life character who sits well in this format and one who carries the story without effort.

A delight on the eye, her iconic image is enhanced further by a series of variant artwork which was considered as covers. These illustrations of the curvy assets of Barbarella that transcends time, has me humming the introduction to the movie where Jane Fonda's screen portrayal of this sexy astronaunt first introduced me to Barbarella.

I'm pleased her legacy continues and may she 'live long and prosper'.

I Did Like the Selection of Variant Covers

This volume is in four parts. The first three parts make up one story and the final part is a short, unrelated adventure drawn by a different artist.

The heroine was pretty generic and didn't call up any old Barbarella memories for me. This didn't have that trippy late 60's vibe or the sort of free-wheeling psychedelic goofiness that made Barbarella special. If you didn't know the heroine astronaut in this volume was Barbarella you probably wouldn't make the connection.

So, it's not much of a Barbarella homage, but it was a middlin' overall adventure tale. Barbarella falls in with a spy on a weirdly fundamental religious planet, has her anatomy reformed by order of the planet's government to remove her nasty sinful genitals, foils a few dastardly plots, saves the planet, gets a fresh set of new private parts, and then jets off for new adventures. Yeah, I know it sounds like a Barbarella plot, but it's not played for much fun. She might as well have just gotten new contact lenses.

There are over twenty pages of variant covers, and they were fun to look at. Otherwise, this was an interesting enough read but not a grabber.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Well, it opens with Barbarella getting her genitalia confiscated on a planet so fundamentalist they've junked junk, which seems about right. But thereafter, Mike Carey's revival feels a bit too linear to capture the trippy, carefree feel either of the original comics or that dream of a film. The artists, none of them names I know, are fine - but I just kept wondering what the Allreds could do with this book. As is, it feels more like a slightly Barbarella-inflected 2000AD strip.

(Netgalley ARC)