trigger warning
<spoiler> bullying, death threats, mention of cruelty towards animals, racism, loss of a parent, implied lynching, trauma </spoiler>

1970-ies: Highschool freshmen are excited enough to join the local roller derby team to lie to their parents. But will it really be as fun as they imagine?

I really like the colour palette of muted reds, oranges and yellow tones, but sadly, that's about the only thing that appealed to me. I did not care for the illustration style or the characters, and the story telling was chaotic. In places you only realise after a few panels that the plot switched to the other characters. The fancy lettering is, in places, hard to decipher as so many letters wind up looking similiar - and I had problems on the pdf version where I could zoom in. Don't know how well it's readable in the print version where you can't do that.

Not my cup of tea, at all.
The arc was provided by the publisher.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

I was interested in reading this because it's about a high school girl joining a roller derby team! I was thinking this would be sort of like Whip It, but set in the 1970's. It very much is not like that movie. This book fell flat for me. The plot is all over the place, and a bit hard to follow. I'm still unsure if this book is supposed to be reality-based or fantastical. The introductory scene confused me quite a bit, and I'm still not sure if it's supposed to be a flashback or a dream. Both? There were many scenes where I thought it was just Wild imagining the entire thing, until other characters comment on it, and I realized that nope, it's reality. The world of Wild is just that weird. It doesn't help that Wild, the main protagonist DOES have an imaginary version of her roller derby hero that she talks to and gets advice from sometimes. As far as I can tell, Wild's version of Rosie is imaginary. (Also, I can tell from the jump, the plot twist with Rosie is that it's her Mom or someone her Mom knew) The scenes of the roller derby fights were really hard to follow. I'm pretty sure a derby match doesn't allow for two players to monologue for THAT much while standing right in the middle of the track. The way the scenes are drawn makes a lot of the plot hard to follow. There were moments when I couldn't tell the order in which the panels were meant to be read since it was drawn in a chaotic way. The art style of the overall book is just chaotic in general. The style seems to change from panel to panel Everything is drawn in some sort of shade of orange, so it made everything start to blend together visually. Page flow was non-existent. Some of the fonts used in this book were so stylized that they were impossible to read. Also, what's up with there very rarely being any backgrounds? I didn't really care for this, and I see it's the first volume in a series. I really have no interest in picking up the second volume.

I picked up ‘Wild’ purely because I play roller derby (referee technically) and I’m a sucker for graphic novels.

The basic outline of ‘Wild’ is we’re following our MC (who the book is named after) as she starts high school in the 70s, while simultaneously joining a roller derby team, while also hiding the fact she has joined the team from her mum. The story then mostly follows her playing roller derby as the team’s jammer and going up against other tougher team, with the help of roller derby idol (in her imagination) who gives her pep talks and loans her…her strength? *shrugs*

Sadly I did struggle to get through this book as the art style is a bit wild (pardon the pun) and the story (particularly the gameplay sections) were hard to follow. I thought the more outlandish panels were Wild’s overactive teenage imagination kicking in but then realised that it’s just the kind of world this story takes place in. The art style almost seems to fall somewhere between Cuphead and Adventure Time.

The roller derby introduction in the story was very rushed - the freshman team doesn’t even do try outs (despite practising all summer) and is instantly accepted since numbers are low, and we never see them practice before it cuts to their first bout.

Since it’s meant to be the 70s I was happy that the artist showed them playing on a old banked style track. The gameplay shown in the book was also somewhat accurate of the time era: which was more “Kanas City Bomber”, fighting on track, giving the audience a show - rather than modern-day roller derby with, y’know, points and rules and stuff.

All in all, ‘Wild’ wasn’t really for me for the art style, story or the loose roller derby aspect, but might be enjoyed by others.

Think 1970s roller derby + teenage rebellion + wild dreams + plenty of violence. It was not for me but I’m sure someone else will enjoy this more than I did.

The story was fine, I was confused sometimes and I’m not sure what happened. My biggest issue was the art style, I’m not saying it’s bad, it was really unique and different but personally it was too overwhelming, the colors and shapes made it incredibly hard for me to read, there was so much going on in every page and I couldn’t process everything. It was not for me but I’m sure someone else will enjoy this more than I did.