A story with a kick-ass heroine navigating the gaming world is what In Real Life, the new comic written by Cory Doctorow and illustrated by Jen Wang is all about.
When Anda starts playing the massively multiplayer online game Coarsegold, she quickly makes new friends and levels up. She even finds a quest: Shutting down “gold farmers,” players who collect valuables inside the game and sell them, violating the rules. But when she befriends one of those gold farmers and learns about his real life, her simple online game gets a lot more complicated.
Doctorow’s story is smart and funny, as to be expected from a plugged-in writer for teens. But the book rises on Wang’s beautiful cartooning, which renders both Anda’s real life and the online world of her avatar Kalidestroyer vividly. Even the gold farmers have become memorable characters courtesy Wang’s sharp line and sense of 2-D and 3-D space.