Monday Morning Funnies: The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies

You may have already heard of Wahab Algarmi and Joel Sigua’s The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies – a web comic that plays cleverly and originally off of the Alan Moore classic, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The self-published six issue mini-series has only been running since July of this year and has already received enthusiastic shout-outs from Pop Candy and Ain’t It Cool News. But if you haven’t, I strongly urge you to head over to the unordinary young ladies’ site to check it out.

And don’t let the basic Blogger template turn you away – while the comic’s web presence could be a bit fancier and more cleanly packaged, you’d be hard pressed to find a more funny, sharply realized, and well-constructed read than this one.

The set up is the same as Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman, which assembled classic science fiction and fantasy characters, such as Dr. Jekyll and John Carter, into an elite espionage team. But the voice is distinctly Algarmi’s, who knowingly winks at you in a darkly comedic, go-for-broke, hyper channel changing way that will be familiar to readers who came of age watching TV in the 70’s and 80’s. The series features characters from Different Strokes, The Facts of Life, Punky Brewster, The Adams Family and more – all reluctantly assembled to fight against the forces of Cold War evil that would destroy the US circa 1980-something.

Algarmi, who’s been exhibiting along the West Coast convention circuit since 2001, says that, “although the comic started as a fun idea based off of Moore’s work, I definitely wanted to show what I could do.” He hopes that “the book comes off as a good solid read by a competent team of creators, even if you aren’t familiar with the characters.”

While Algarmi and Sigua have no current plans to continue The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies‘ saga beyond Issue #6 (available for free on the site, where you can also order periodical copies), Algarmi is also currently hard at work on “some of my own ideas, which I’ve already started on and hope to get a publisher for. I’ve already written a short 8 page story to introduce publishers to my next comic.”

He’d also “love to do anything for either of the big 2 publishers. I grew up with super heroes and to see my name in something like a Batman or Spider-Man book would be a dream come true… I also admire Boom! Studios and Dynamite. They really are trying hard to bring non super hero comics to the forefront. I could see myself doing a really cool Inspector Gadget or Danger Mouse comic with either of those publishers. I still love the Inspector and think his adventures would translate well in comics. He needs to get the treatment he deserves, in any medium!”

With The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies Algarmi has proved that he can easily develop creator owned material or deftly re-invent a licensed proprety. So comics editors and gatekeepers take heed – and give this talented young creator a call.