Curb Angels

This graphic novel opens with four girls standing on a brick-lined streetscape. The tallest of them sports a mane of blonde hair and a 1980’s era rock-star outfit. Next to her is Kat, a Scottish lass (although she’d hate being described that way) in full punk regalia. Then, there’s Jula who hails from India: she’s way shorter than the others, but she has a big heart. Last in the line-up is Reiko, a Thai girl, sometimes impassive, and sometimes, angry.

Kat, Jula, and Reiko all meet in Bangkok at a statue of a Buddha. Each has been summoned there by a letter, cryptically signed “W”. “W” is Waffles, the blonde with the big hair, and she arrives just after the first three have introduced themselves to each other. Kat’s patience (never great) has run its course, and she asks Waffles, “Hey, Glam-rock! Is this your doing? You holding auditions for Mötley Crüe or something?” Waffles responds with a vicious kick to Kat’s head, and several pages of fighting ensue in which Kat, Reiko, and Jula all prove their mettle. But that fight was exactly what Waffles wanted. She’s impressed; the fight was a test to ensure that the three others “weren’t a bunch of dandelions. I need girls with grit, and you three are downright abrasive.” Waffles bills herself as a “Project Manager”, and the other three wonder just what that project might be. Because they’ve been offered very good money for their assistance, they accept her invitation to meet her at a bar to discuss the “project”.

Waffles roars off on Reiko’s motorbike, and Jula rides Waffles’ bicycle, but Kat and Reiko walk through the streets, continually harassed by guys giving them the eye, wolf-whistles, and solicitations of “boyfriend?”. Kat tries to engage Reiko in conversation about her background, but Reiko makes it clear that she doesn’t do small talk. She’s angry at the exploitation that “farangs” – white foreigners – inflict. “You foreigners think you can show up in my country, take whatever you want, then leave with no empathy or regret. You’ll never understand the damage your selfishness causes us.” Thailand is infamous as a destination for white male tourists who travel there for the sex trade, and Reiko knows it all too well. Once the three girls meet with Waffles and participate in an initial skirmish in that very bar, they learn what her “project” is. She rescues girls and young women from the brothels, bars, and clubs to which they work as prostitutes. In the past seven years, Waffles has travelled the world, but she always returns to Thailand where she first saw the world of sex trafficking and the sadness of very young girls “sold or abducted to satisfy a growing demand in an insidious industry.” Kat takes the view that perhaps the girls chose their life, but Reiko sets the girls straight as to the desperate circumstances which force parents into selling their daughters to pimps and traffickers.

Waffles has another project planned, but first they stop at Compassion House, a refuge for rescued girls. Run by Ebele, a retired nurse from Nigeria, the place, financed by private donors, offers a variety of support services so that the girls can try to re-connect with their families, find some other type of work, and get much-needed medical treatment. The visit is a short one, just enough for everyone to catch their breath before their next mission, an ambush of a couple of pimps driving a van carrying three captive women. The drivers of the van work for a man named Prasong, the kingpin for a trafficking ring in that part of Thailand. After the takedown of the van goons, the four team members repair to yet another bar where they discuss strategy. Reiko knows plenty about Prasong; she worked for him. Kat has a past, too. A former drug addict, she struggles to stay clean. She is trying to start over, and, in an alleyway close to the bar, she and Reiko bond over cigarettes and the stories of their lives.

Soon Waffles and Jula show up, and the four head back to Compassion House; Waffles’ phone calls to the refuge have gone unanswered, and she has concerns. When they arrive at Compassion House, they find that the rescued girls have been taken, Ebele has been brutally attacked, and the van-driving goons have returned, ready to take revenge. Waffles, Kat, and Reiko are taken by the goons, with only Jula left behind to seek aid for Ebele. Jula is the soul of compassion, and her kind heart is the reason why Waffles recruited her for the project. But the attack at Compassion House galvanizes her fighting spirit, and she resolves that she will rescue her friends and the girls taken from the safe house.

Prasong’s headquarters are at “Club Ignite”, and that’s where he is holding Waffles, Kat and Reiko. Kat never holds back, and her insults infuriate Prasong. As he sees it, he is offering young women an escape from poverty or life in a conflict zone. As he sees it, he offers them a good life, “food, refuge, income for their families”. He believes that he protects these young women and states that “it infuriates me when farangs come in and think they’re doing what’s best for my girls.” Prasong has plans for his current captives; after he has broken their spirit, he’ll sell Kat to a trafficker in Europe and have Reiko back in his stable at Club Ignite. As for Waffles, who knows what he has in mind. In the meantime, Jula has arrived at the Club and is threading her way through a crowd of hard-drinking white guys, bar girls, and skimpily clad pole dancers, hoping that she can find her friends. Amazingly, Kat and Reiko escape their captors and equally amazingly, the tiny but mighty Jula finds the two. The three then head to Prasong’s office with plans to rescue Waffles, but she’s a woman who can take care of herself. Somehow, she managed to knock out her captors, tie Prasong to a chair, and most importantly, get her hands on the ledger book in which he has listed all of his international contacts in the sex trafficking business, as well as the names and prices for the girls who have been sold.

Waffles is adamant about what she wants from Prasong: that all of “his” girls be released, that Club Ignite and all the other clubs be shut down. Her demands are “impossible” as far as he is concerned, and, besides, he sees the girls as his property. In a state of white-hot anger, Waffles smacks Prasong with his ledger book and demands “Where is Rikka?” Rikka, Waffles’ sister, was last seen at Club Ignite, and now, readers understand why Waffles returns to Thailand after her forays to other countries. Seven years later, despite her dedication to her mission, Waffles still hasn’t found her sister. The book concludes with the four girls reading the front page of the Bangkok Post, pleased at the exposure of Club Ignite as a centre for trafficked girls and women, but fully aware that what they did was “just a drop in the bucket.” Each of the three receives her final payment for assisting Waffles, and Kat decides to return home. As Kat walks away from the temple where the team first assembled, Waffles asks Reiko and Jula, “So . . . who’s up for Russia?”

Curb Angels offers a unique perspective on human trafficking and the situations which lead to girls and young women being procured for the sex trade. Thailand is notorious for its destination tourism, but Waffles’ trips to other Asian and European countries show that trafficking is a widespread problem and that some of the girls are mere children. Economic desperation – their own or their parents – leads them into this truly sordid world. Readers know what drives Waffles’ sense of mission; what we don’t know is where she gets the money to finance it, or how she finds recruits for her team. She’s a bit of a loose cannon, totally unpredictable at times, but she is courageous, and readers can’t help but like her. Kat is rough around the edges, but after readers learn of her history with drugs and her struggles to stay clean, it’s easier to understand why she’s as tough as she is. Reiko – her back story as a former prostitute makes her a perfect candidate for Waffle’s team; she understands the circumstances which lead to so many girls being sold into sex slavery and is righteously indignant at the foreigners who maintain the “marketplace” in which these girls live and work. As for Jula, she starts off as something of a naïf, but her innate compassion is the quality which Waffles sought for her team, and, in many ways, she grows the most in the course of the story. The relationship amongst the four begins uneasily, but they bond as friends and partners in this project.

Telling this story of human trafficking, through the medium of graphic novel, is highly effective. These three young women have the grit that Waffles sought, and the fight scenes are powerfully rendered. Tat the illustrations are all black and white, with some solid colour backgrounds or accents, helps to keep the focus on the grittiness of this story. With four strong female characters, this is a book that is most likely to engage female readers of graphic novels; the men in this book are all bad dudes. The women of Curb Angels are powerful and female readers of graphic novels will enjoy meeting Waffles, Kat, Reiko and Jula. And the end of the book will leave readers thinking that Waffles, Reiko and Jula will be continuing the mission.