She’s Running on Fumes Issues #3 & #4 Review

Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)

I don’t know how to feel about issues #3 and #4 of “She’s Running on Fumes” by Dennis Hopeless and Hilary Jenkins. These new chapters were quite frustrating to read, and the artwork felt even more chaotic.

Recap of Issues #1 & #2 of “She’s Running on Fumes” – Jeannie, a mother of two, finds herself trapped in a life of crime after her husband Jodie gets into a fatal car crash and loses 4 kilos of cocaine. Instead of running away, Jeannie starts working for a chop shop, but things only get worse when her good-for-nothing husband is released from the hospital and begins to lose his mind.

Issues #3 and #4 follow Jeannie’s continued chaotic journey of stealing cars and making money to pay off the missing drugs. However, in a big twist, she finds something that could resolve her financial troubles. Yet, things only get worse for Jeannie, especially as her husband Jodie starts to recover and goes back to being a nuisance. It was really frustrating to read because the protagonist sticks around with the jerk out of guilt over how it would look to abandon someone who was recently hospitalized. But what does that get her? A shit ton of problems.

“She’s Running on Fumes” continues in the same vein as the first two issues: Jeannie constantly getting into messy situations because of her husband. Author Dennis Hopeless does a great job of painting Jodie as a completely despicable criminal who doesn’t deserve to have a family, let alone someone resourceful like Jeannie. There are some mildly funny moments in the chapters, like how in issue #2, Jodie was hallucinating and talking to his feces, freaking his family out. Although I am not a fan of potty humor, similar jokes continue in these issues.

Even though there are two interesting twists in the tale, the storytelling feels flat. It’s just one disaster after another, and not very entertaining at that. As I mentioned in my review of the earlier issues, “She’s Running on Fumes” is like a typical American crime story, focusing on a woman’s struggle to hustle her way out of the quicksand of crime. Perhaps the next issue might be more compelling.

“She’s Running on Fumes” is also on Kindle Unlimited.

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