Goth Girl was a powerfully written story of Kyra, a teenage girl dealing with the loss of her mother to lung cancer. We met Kyra in The Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, where she befriends Fanboy and helps him to see the opposite sex as more than just an object which in turn helps with the development of his comic book. At the end of the story though Fanboy is frightened that Kyra may try to take her life, so he makes an anonymous call to her dad to warn him. Goth Girl Rising starts with Kyra being released from the "hospital" after a 6 month stay. She ended up there as a direst result of Fanboy's phone call, so she's angry with him and she plans different forms of revenge. She's also reconnecting with her friends and doing a lot of fighting with her father. She has many confrontations with the teachers and vice-principal, but really she's just trying find her way back into the world to what's normal. A few of the chapters are actually letters to Neil Gaiman, because she's made a connection to his Sandman comics, the character, Death especially. She's looking for answers and just feels all alone. This story is a sensitive look at a teenage girl dealing with all that life has to throw at her and Barry Lyga does it so well.
