West Hollywood Monster Squad
Writer: Sina Grace
Artist: Bradley Clayton
Flatter: Wren Rios
Letterer: Chris Dickey
Designer: Andrea Miller
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Publication Date: January 28, 2025
Marvin has planned the perfect night out with his best friends, Annie and Gizelle, who are back in their hometown (a suburb of Los Angeles) from college for the weekend—and nothing will stop him from having a great time at the all-ages drag show at a WeHo gay bar seeing his favorite drag queen. But then Annie brings her new girlfriend, who’s also named Annie, and the inimitable drag diva WEB DuBoiz is not only lacking energy on stage, but rude when Marvin approaches her after her set. To make matters even worse, his former best friend—the jock who outed him to their high school—is there with a date.
All told, it’s a bad night for Marvin, who’s already struggling through his senior year without his two older best friends there to ground him. Just when he hits his breaking point and picks a fight with Annie about her girlfriend, the bar devolves into chaos when a giant, purple monster rampages inside and starts ripping people to shreds. Petty drama surely has no place in the apocalypse, right? … right?
To put it bluntly, West Hollywood Monster Squad reads the apocalypse for filth. Drawing on themes of found family, capitalism, corruption, and exploitation, writer Sina Grace has penned a deeply queer zombie/kaiju tale that asks its readers to question whether their entertainment is worth the cost. It bears similarities to Lindsay King-Miller’s The Z Word, a prose horror novel about corporate Pride and queer exploitation, but with a queer teenager of color as its POV character and a more hopeful take on what survival might look like for the disenfranchised.
Grace has a knack for incorporating timely pop culture references in his work, and West Hollywood Monster Squad is no exception. This graphic novel is rife with references to queer iconography, and art by Bradley Clayton frequently references famous comics moments without ever feeling overdone. In many ways, this book feels like a love letter to the very entertainment it’s questioning, which adds another dose of complexity.
Marvin meets multiple personal heroes and none of them live up to his expectations. We all know how dangerous it can be to put anyone on a pedestal, but it’s hard not to feel let down when someone whose work we love is… well, a letdown. Furthermore, what does it mean to love something problematic? What does it mean to say no to something that could transform your life because it isn’t worth the breach of privacy? West Hollywood Monster Squad asks these questions and more, presenting multilayered answers from characters with vastly different life experience and stakes.
Although this is an apocalyptic book, it’s also genuinely funny and boasts several moments of pure sweetness between its characters. The plot is solid and the pacing is good, but the relationships formed and transformed are what make the read feel so special. Grace and Clayton’s work is incredibly cohesive, and lettering by Chris Dickey and flats by Wren Rios make each moment—particularly the full-page spreads that come in the final chapter—absolutely burst from the page.
There’s so much vivacity in queer horror, and West Hollywood Monster Squad‘s YA take on the genre is no exception.
Final Verdict: Buy