Motel Art Improvement Service is about as charmingly goofy a graphic novel as anyone could ask for, by turns cutely raunchy and archly clever as it tells the story of Bee, an 18-year-old whose cross-country bike journey has been cut unexpectedly short, and Cyrus, a renegade artist who travels the country in his own weird way.

The title comes from Cyrus's habit of stealing motel art from wherever he happens to be working as housekeeper that week and embellishing it as only an art school hipster can; a showgirl advertising Atlantic City is suddenly a little old lady in pasties, a sickeningly bucolic farm scene suddenly depicts a shunned hitchhiker as well. He also has a habit of helping himself to 10% of whatever pharmaceuticals he finds in the guests' belongings as he cleans the room -- and it is this habit, rather than the art thing, that drives the plot, which is tight and tense and funny as hell.

This is not a book for the young'uns or the puritanical, mind you. Bee and Cyrus take a lot of drugs and have a lot of adorably explicit cartoon sex as they make their way through this offbeat little story. The art is bright and colorful and the character designs are very appealing; Bee is no standard-issue pneumatic comic book bombshell but seems like a real girl with a bigger butt (when getting uniforms she says she needs a size 10 shirt and size 4 top), and Cyrus is just a tall, rangy, lanky dude, but, like real people should and do, they just work with what they have and are trying to find ways to be happy. And as an aid in that endless quest, Motel Art Improvement Service is rather a good one. ( )

Love this graphic novel. The heroine is nerdy, fashion-challenged and pear-shaped and yet she's athletic, and finds love (or at least sex) and adventure! The art is fun, and the story line is original and funny. There is no adolescent angst at all.