A Teenager’s True Adventure

Dirty words got Maggie Whorf started in the comic book business.

But first they got her suspended from school.

Whorf was one of three freshmen at the Marlborough School in Hancock Park who were furloughed for a day two years ago when schoolmates’ parents objected to the contents of Whore-Hey, a black-and-white ‘zine the girls had produced as their response to John F. Kennedy Jr.’s George. It was filled with what, in delicate quarters, might be considered unacceptable language.

Fortunately for Whorf, the comic book business isn’t one of those delicate quarters. She got a call from editor Mark Paniccia at Flypaper Press, an upstart comic-book publisher.

“It was bizarre,” says Whorf, now a 16-year-old junior. She and her fellow artistes had “ended up in Buzz [magazine] because of the suspensions. We were No. 9 [on the list] of the coolest people in L.A. Then Mark called. He wanted a fresh perspective on teenage life.”

The result: “Bohos,” short for Bohemians, a three-part comic book series produced last summer to a generally positive reception. Whorf wrote the script and the dialogue; three artists did the illustrations.

Paniccia says the series sold out its press run of 60,000 (although a quick check with local shops found that some copies still are available). It was a remarkable launch, says Maggie Thompson, editor of the Comic Buyer’s Guide, a trade magazine. “That’s very good in this market for a title this size, for basically what amounts to an unknown creator. There are titles from major comic book companies that aren’t doing that well.”

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Thompson says that if Whorf “can continue to do what she’s doing and the word spreads--this is a communicating audience--then she could be a breakthrough.” The series had targeted teenage girls, a traditionally untapped market that the comic book industry has been looking for ways to reach. Thompson notes that most comic books are rooted in the violence of superheroes, which doesn’t find much of a reception among young women.

A paperback trade edition combining all three “Bohos” is due in the next couple of months. Meanwhile, Flypaper is shopping “Bohos” to various television and movie studios, hoping to convert it into a live-action movie or series.

Whorf doesn’t have a contract with Flypaper to continue the series because, both she and Flypaper explain, they haven’t gotten around to discussing it yet. But she already has mapped out future topics: rock stars who complain about being rock stars, laser pointers zipping across the screen in movie theaters . . .

“I haven’t done anything on Leo DiCaprio, so there’s always that,” laughs Whorf, who made about $5,000--$75 per page--from the three “Bohos.”

Her plots for “Bohos” are rooted in teenage reality, following four high school friends at a concert, a night at the movies and on a shopping excursion. Romantic interests propel the story line, but the real fun comes in the sarcastic dialogue and satirical backdrops.

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The concert, for example, is the Sunshine for Satan Tour, with teeny-boppers Hanson opening for the darkly inspired Marilyn Manson. A character named Catherine Wheal [a takeoff on the rock band Catherine Wheel] gets doused by a can of Yuka Cola.

The underlying focus of the series, Whorf says, is pop culture, which she views with a mix of revulsion and infatuation.

“There’s so much that pop culture offers to people, so much hypocrisy,” Whorf says. The daughter of a graphics designer and a real estate agent, she lives in West Hollywood, in the shadow of the Beverly Center. “I have all sorts of opinions on the media and music and trends. It’s not a candy-coated view.”

She sees her characters as anti-”Dawson’s Creek,” girls prone to obsessing over parts of their lives but equally likely to skewer the world around them. The stories are narrated by problem-plagued Catherine, whose mother is dead and who describes herself as “typical . . . the whole self-loathing thing due to too much exposure to Seattle complaint rock.”

Her friends are pseudo-hippie Vicki, aggressively cynical Amy, and Stew, the only male, whose dominant and clearly unattainable goal in life is to become a rock star. Whorf says the dialogue comes from her conversations with friends.

“That’s how we talk,” she says in a raspy voice. “That’s what we do: go see a concert and rip the band apart just because they’re up there.”

Reactions around Marlborough--a prestigious and private all-girls school--to her new sideline have been positive, Whorf says. It was an indescribable rush, she adds, to walk through the school and see other girls reading the book.

“That was weird,” Whorf says. “And when people came back and told me their impressions, that was even weirder.”