Hopeless Savages

Hopeless Savages
Cover to Ground Zero issue #1
Publication information
Publisher	Oni Press
Schedule	monthly
Format	miniseries, one-shot, graphic novel
Publication date(s)	2002-
No. of issues	13 + 1 graphic novel
Main character(s)	Skank Zero Hopeless-Savage
Creative team
Written by	Jen Van Meter
Artist(s)	Christine Norrie

Hopeless Savages is a comic book series created and written by Jen Van Meter, and published by Oni Press. Thus far there have been three 4-issue miniseries (also released as trade paperbacks), a one-shot, and an original graphic novel, all written by van Meter but each illustrated by a different set of artists, including Christine Norrie, Chynna Clugston, Andi Watson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Vera Brosgol, and Meredith McClaren.

The story follows the members of the Hopeless-Savage family. Parents Dirk Hopeless and Nikki Savage are old-school punks who were part of the 70's punk scene. They married and moved to the suburbs to raise their children. The three oldest, Rat Bastard, Arsenal Fierce, and Twitch Strummer, are grown and have moved out of the house; youngest daughter Skank Zero is in high school as the series begins.

The thread running throughout the stories is a family which superficially doesn't fit the "norm" but which can still stand together and function better than most "normal" families.

The Hopeless-Savages live in a typical suburban neighborhood in the fictitious Flange City. Although all of the family's children were born and raised in the United States, they all make frequent use of the working-class British slang that they grew up with.

Art by Christine Norrie with flashbacks illustrated by Chynna Clugston-Major. The first miniseries deals with Dirk and Nikki being kidnapped and their children trying to find them. They suspect it has something to do with their parents' past; so Arsenal, Twitch, and Zero first track down their older brother Rat, who they believe would know more about the situation but who left the family ten years earlier. Zero is at first reluctant to find him, feeling betrayed when he left. They finally locate him using their father's real name as a pseudonym and working at a trendy coffee company's corporate office. After attempting to de-program him they unravel the mystery of their parents' abduction, which stems back to copyright issues and Dirk's embarrassing past as a teen idol.