Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar Book 2 – The Rock God Complex
Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar Book 2 – The Rock God ComplexCartoonist: Kevin Alvir
Publisher: IDW Publishing – Top Shelf
Publication Date: February 2026
There’s a bit in Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar Book 1: Attack of the Snack that I think about a lot. Essentially, within a book in which Lisa Cheese wages superhero/anime battle a bunch of times, has her arm ripped off by demons at an open mic, and is at the center of a lot more threatening things, she is consistently most concerned that her family thinks she’s a loser.
“My big dream doesn’t seem attainable,” she tells her friend Ghost Guitar. “Now I’ve got a cyborg arm, trying to protect this bakery from getting shut down by an evil magic corporation, working a dumb job, and … I just get no respect. My barbarian family think I’m a fool for moving to Earth City. My life sucks.”
It’s very funny writing, with a sort of deadpan matter-of-factness to it, but moreover, I think it kind of sums up what I like most about cartoonist Kevin Alvir’s Lisa Cheese books, the second of which is out this month: that these are really girl in the big city dramas, that just so happen to also bouncing between big action set pieces. Of course, a lot of comics try to do things like that — combining the fantastical with the relatable — but what really makes Lisa Cheese work is the juxtaposition of the voice I’m keen on above with such fun action comics wackiness. What results is in my opinion is comics of the most clever variety, with some of the funniest dialogue in all of comics.
And really, this new volume picks up right where the first left off. Within 20 pages, Lisa and Ghost Guitar (GG, familiarly) are fighting a giant cherub demon baby who stole some flour from the aforementioned bakery, and we off we go.
Another thing I appreciate about Lisa Cheese is that the comics handle action so well, and this second book might have even better action sequences than the first. It’d be easy to sort of skimp on the punch-y cartooning, just using it as a bridge between plot points and hilarious dialouge, but these Lisa Cheese books take fighting seriously, too. And it makes it all the more fun to read, with pacing fueled by a delightful unpredictability — I never know from one segment to the next whether Lisa is going to be rage fighting with her cyborg arm, or downing six pints of ice cream and bemoaning the quality of her apartment, or fretting over her music career.
At the core of this second book is more making it in the big city drama, including job loss, having to go back home for a high school reunion, and, naturally, finding one’s self through crystals (just the ones that speak directly to you). There’s also some really fun music industry stuff in here, that will surely feel relatable to creatives of any sort. There’s layers to this book, and it just all comes together so well.
My favorite type of comic is one that both takes itself and the story it’s telling very seriously, while also poking fun in the telling, making great and creative use of the absurdities that comics enable. Lisa Cheese is all that, plus — and I’ll say it again — one of the funniest, most clever voices in comics.
This is all to say that while Lisa Cheese’s life may suck (and, honestly, it’s not that bad, she’s got friends now and is doing pretty well for her, honestly), these books are an absolute blast.
Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar Book 2: The Rock God Complex is out this month via Top Shelf
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