Rating: WORTHY!
It's in this volume that Adam finally realizes he may have made a mistake in believing that Cass was his one true love. Ghost Cass says something that sets him off searching for the other five contestants in the beauty pageant where he first met Cass. IMO his mistake was looking there in the first place - at a pageant that's so obsessed with skin-deep appearance instead of looking a lot deeper, but that issue is one which isn't touched upon in this comic series at all, I'm sorry to say.
He hires his low-life step bothers at a thousand dollar a pop for each of the girls in that pageant that they turn up for him, and he visits them one by one. How he can, as a Christian, justify this squandering of money which could have helped the poor and fed the hungry is also not touched upon. For all his bluster, Adam is truly a piss-poor Christian in the romanticized and idealistic sense of the word, but he's a very good blind believer in the vengeful Old Testament style.
He meets on girl at one of his uncle's sex parties, and another who is pregnant and who starts to deliver the baby as he talks to her. That was amusing, and made a truly refreshing change from the stereotypical birth scenes, especially those on TV, where the guy panics and his wife is screaming in pain. Yes, there are some deliveries like that, but not every single delivery is like that by any means!
The extent of Cyndi's past is revealed in this arc, and also it becomes more and more clear that Mel and Cyndi are going to become an item, although there is still a surprise in store there. Adam finally meets one of the pageant girls, Vanessa Upton, who he honestly believes could be his soul-mate. On a whim, he takes off after her as she starts off on an impromptu low-budget tour of the world.
It was nice to read this volume because it was such a change from the previous one. The artwork was a joy -brighter and far more positive, far less tediously menacing than the previous volume, and more importantly, for me, the text took a turn for the better: all of the scenes where Adam and Vanessa interacted were a joy to read, and I was to discover that this joy only increased in the next volume. Definitely a worthy read!
