Did you know that Lisa from Blackpink wrote some comic books? Well today we’re going to review them! Let’s take a look at “Alterego” and “Alterego II”!
So if you’re wondering “okay what the fuck”, let me explain. In 2025, Lisa from Blackpink came out with her solo album “Alterego”, which I suppose I could review at some point but I probably won’t anytime soon because I’ve had about 3466 album review suggestions since I started making album reviews a thing on this site and that hasn’t been one of them so if it gets suggested now it can go to the back of the queue. The concept of the album is something about how Lisa has a bunch of alter egos and they’re characterised in the songs in some different ways, or something like that. I’m not doing a very good job of explaining this, so let’s listen to Lisa, perhaps she can explain it better than I can:
Okay, so perhaps not, but I think all you really need to know is that these are alter egos that exist as a concept and each one has a feature track on the album associated with them (which is probably why the album sounds like a dog’s breakfast but anyway). So for whatever reason (promotional purposes I guess, or maybe just because she feels like it) Lisa makes comic books now and she’s written a couple comic books that are supposed to expand on these alter egos of hers, so we’ll take a look at those now.
ALTEREGO/ALTEREGO II
Story by: Lisa
Art by: Minomiyabi
Dialogue (in book II) by: Brandon Montclare
Backgrounds by: Derick Jones
Colouring by: Fred Stresing (book I), Vlad Popov (book II)
Lettering by: Micah Myers
Designed by: Vincent Kings
Edited by: Josh Frankel
Alterego: 54 pages, softcover, 258mm x 168mm
Alterego II: 40 pages, softcover, 258mm x 168mm
Store link so the people involved don’t hate me for this snarky review and can still make a buck
Full disclosure: I am reviewing these comic books because I was sent them by a kind caonima, and they seemed like things that I could review, so I am. I am not however generally someone who I would call a “comic book reader”, at least not these days. I did read comics as a kid, although I quickly grew bored of “superhero” style comics and thought they were ultra-lame, I could never work out why the underpants were on the outside even back then. I eventually gravitated towards the “2000AD” comics in my teen years which I thought were a lot more interesting because the stories were darker and more grounded in a possible reality rather than just cunts running around everywhere with capes and bright ballbag-contour-revealing underwear, but I didn’t keep the reading up until adulthood. Aside from some hentai and some 1950s romance comics, I don’t own any comics at all anymore and I haven’t purchased anything comic-related in at least a decade. So therefore I am not reviewing these books from the point of view of a “comic expert” or anything like that, just as a layperson who is also a k-pop fan and who has encountered these thing and wants to check out what Lisa did with it.
So Lisa’s input into these comics is in the story aspect, and especially the characters, so let’s give you a quick synopsis of each character as I understand them.
Vixi works as a vending machine mechanic. She’s good at mechanical stuff, but supposedly lacks the ability to “fix people”, although there’s no actual evidence of this as she seems to make friends of the other characters and sort out their issues quickly and easily. Vixi is the “main character”, she’s the most central to the plot of the first book, and she’s also central in the cover designs of both books. Which makes the name choice odd as Lisa apparently can’t pronounce it:
Our four other characters are:
Roxi is a very successful pop singer (in a four-member pop group naturally but we ignore the other members of course… and the crowd only chants Roxi’s name LOL). Unlike the other characters, who all seem to be at peace with their destiny, Roxi seems to be somewhat conflicted about her chosen career path.
Kiki is the arcade gamer. In one story she’s playing a Dance Dance Revolution type game, in another it’s claw machines. That’s about the extent of her character.
Sunni is the kind girl with a poor upbringing who is dressed a little less glam than the others, which basically means she wears a beanie and clothing in earth tones and likes animals, and that’s that I guess.
Speedi is the “daredevil” character and she likes to go fast. “Speedi’s my name, and speed is the game”, she actually says at one point, just in case you felt confused by any potential subtext.
Once could argue that these aren’t the most deep characterisations ever, but we’re looking at two very small comic books here with low pagecounts, so I guess there’s a limit to how deep you can go. Also I guess these characters are all probably meant to be different aspects of Lisa herself (although nowhere is the real Lisa implied or referred to anywhere except the credits) rather than full characters in their own right so it’s no big deal that we don’t go too in-depth on every single one. Really this is about you getting to know different sides of the ever-multi-faceted Lisa and increasing your parasocial connection all the more so you stay sticky as a fan and buy the things and what’s that Rose girl doing hey don’t look at that look over here, it’s a comic book it’s bright and shiny.
A quick plot synopsis of both books. Feel free to skip but I’ll keep spoilers light-ish.
ALTEREGO STORY: there’s a page or two devoted to getting to know each character’s current situation, and a brief flashback for each one as well. Every other character’s connection to Vixi is explained. Vixi doesn’t get a flashback but instead a scene where she get accosted by some creeps and defends herself. Then the main story begins and she goes to fix a vending machine but it’s actually a sneaky revenge trap by the same creeps which warps her into another universe or something where they have superhero style battles. Somehow her friends arrive in this new world (not sure how but I guess no point establishing all of their backstories earlier if they’re absent from the action hey) and they have super abilities for some reason and the usual comic book superhero type things take over. Biff bam pow, you get the idea.
ALTEREGO II STORY: five not-really-related stories, one for each character. Roxi has issues dealing with fame so runs off to a dive bar where nobody knows her to do an impromptu gig. Vixi fixes a robot that stores memories. Kiki plays claw machines. Sunni looks after a cat. Speedi goes fast in a race. All the while each character learns a lesson about life and having friends and stuff, and all the ones who aren’t Vixi have a cute little interaction with Vixi somehow.
I actually liked the stories in the second book more. The first book starts promisingly but just degenerates into standard superhero battle type stuff which I found boring as fuck. The second book was a bit cheesy with the deep-and-meaningful life lessons but the stories were more down to earth and relatable and nobody had their arms magically turn into vines for no reason.
VISUALS: each book is full-colour all the way through. The standard of drawing on the covers is pretty much what you get on the inside as well, which is great because I remember the bait-and-switch that comics back in my youth would pull where the cover art far outclassed the effort made inside the books – not so here. For those interested, none of the characters look completely like Lisa but none of them look completely unlike her either, Roxi probably looks slightly more like her than any of the others being the singer and all (she’s top right on both front covers) but there’s not much in it, Lisa has probably looked a little bit like all of these characters at one stage or another depending on whatever concept she was doing at the time. While I wouldn’t say the overall art style is my preference (I find it a bit harsh and garish) I definitely didn’t feel cheated here either. Maybe nerdy comic book experts will find something here to pick on but to my uneducated eyes it looked fine. Although there definitely were a few panels during the fight scenes where I wasn’t completely sure what was actually going on, but that could just be me being an old colourblind cunt so I’ll give it a pass.
EDITING: okay, here is where the books struggle the most for me. There’s quite a few noticeable fuckups here and there with the text. English usage is pretty good most of the time, but there’s a few panels where the word choice doesn’t make much sense. “There was a before…. before my became my family” is an actual sentence in the first book and it’s not the only example of weird English usage where you still kind of know what they meant by the context it’s in, but it just doesn’t read right even when taking into account how characters might talk funny in certain situations such as being emotional or stressed or whatever. The second book is better at this, but also has mistakes, such as trouble differentiating between the “i” in “Speedi” and an exclamation mark at one point. There are also scenes where I wonder if the true meaning got lost in translation just a little, such as the end of Kiki’s story in the second book where the “moral of the story” comes off a bit like sour grapes which probably wasn’t the intention. While it’s not that huge of a deal, the books could have used another set of eyes going over them thoroughly before publication just to iron out these issues. If I can do it all on my own with an 87,000 word novel, Lisa’s team should be able to manage this, it’s not like there’s a huge word count here that would have delayed the release schedule by a month or anything if they were to do another editing pass and check it with a fluent English speaker. Perhaps they should have hired me. It certainly feels like the text editing wasn’t a huge priority here.
OTHER SHIT: the first book also comes with some “concept art” (I guess you could call it a full-size photocard, as each copy of the book apparently has one of four variations – Vixi on one side and one of the other four characters on the other) and a work-in-progress page or two so you can see line art etc, that might be interesting for comic book nerds interested in the art style. The first book also has some subtle embossing on the main character on the front cover, so you can, I don’t know, cut it out if you love mangling your own comic books, or maybe just shine it in the light a bit and reflect some sun rays onto someone’s fat ass. The second book doesn’t have any of this stuff.
Worth noting that Lisa’s actual “Alterego” music album does come in five different flavours, one for each character, but the comic books aren’t included in that package, not even in the box set, in case you were wondering.
OVERALL: I didn’t mind these books, I guess, even though this format of reading a story really doesn’t appeal to me much at all and I’m not wild about the art style. But they didn’t entertain/bother me for that long anyway as they’re rather short, you won’t spend more than half an hour combined reading them both, and that’s when taking time to go extra slow and really smell the roses. So I guess the main weakness here is value, you’re really not getting that much for the money. However I have no idea how much shit like this costs because I never buy it, so maybe the prices are actually reasonable, I don’t know, you can check the store link (linked above) and see for yourself. But I’m glad someone sent this to me for free because I would never buy this at its current cost.
What does all of this say about Lisa? Well, don’t expect any great revelations about k-pop here because that’s not really what the book is about, and it also seems to have fuck all to do with any of Lisa’s music, which I guess has been such a fizzer that even Lisa herself isn’t that interested in writing about it. The most interesting thing to me was that Lisa seems to have a boner for this “badass” Vixi chick with a miserable-ass low-tier day job, while the girl in the stories who actually is a pop star with a pop star lifestyle basically does nothing but question her life choices. There’s definitely some idealisation going on with the ever-capable Vixi, but it’s not the most Mary Sue-ish character I’ve ever seen, I’ve seen far worse examples in most k-pop fiction books. It’s clear Lisa is in love with the character though, she says it herself that she’s in her “bad girl era”. Judging by these stories I wouldn’t be surprised if Lisa herself doesn’t spend that much longer in the pop star realm and pivots to something else which is more her passion – probably not fixing vending machines, but you never know. Or maybe perhaps it’s putting out a book like this that gives her the self-expression she needs to keep going on and being the voice for cookie-cutter pop music while dreaming of tightening loose bolts at your local Million-Life.
Anyway “Alterego” and “Alterego II” are comic books and they exist and you could buy them if you wanted. Personally I wouldn’t, but maybe you would? I’ll give these comic books two stingy box sets out of five, but add a third stingy box set if you have retinas that function across the entire colour spectrum plus have read a comic book in the last decade.
Are you a brave writer of k-pop books who would like to see me review your work? If so, get in touch!
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