Jailbait: Collected Edition

by Mary Jo Pehl

The collected edition of this sexy camp series, written as a tongue-in-cheek B-movie serial by Mystery Science Theaters 3000's Mary Jo Pehl, "Jailbait" follows the adventures of an all-female undercover organization looking to hunt down predatory perverts by any means necessary and prevent children from becoming targets. It has been described as "To Catch a Predator" meets "Charlie’s Angels" meets Ed Wood’s "The Violent Years." Those who are big fans of MST3K will love this series!

Kindle Edition

First published May 6, 2014

About the author

Mary Jo Pehl is a writer/performer/producer with Cinematic Titanic, the live version of the Peabody Award-winning TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, for which she was a writer and on-air actor in the recurring role of Pearl Forrester. For these two projects, she has bravely withstood hundreds of the worst movies ever made. The experience hasn’t killed her, only made her stronger.

Mary Jo has worn out packs of pencils for Austin Monthly, Austin Chronicle, Minnesota Monthly, Minneapolis StarTribune, Catholic Digest, Salon.com, PBS and more. Her work is featured in several anthologies, including Life's A Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women's Humor and Travelers' Tales: The Thong Also Rises. Her commentaries have aired on NPRs All Things Considered and Weekend America, and The Savvy Traveler on Public Radio International.

As a standup comedian, Mary Jo has appeared on Comedy Central and A&E, and in stage productions in New York and Los Angeles. She has also contributed to RiffTrax.

She is a member of the former First Family of Circle Pines, Minnesota, but that's another story, which you can read in her new book. That book, Employee of The Month and Other Big Deals, is available through Amazon.com.

A native of Minnesota, Mary Jo lives in Austin, Texas with Total Husband Ron and Total Dog Seymour.

Reviews

[gremlinkitten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only read the first issue, so don't know where the story goes from there, but the first one is okay. It has a decent basis, good artwork, but an uneven storyline and not much character development, if any. I have no clue if I'll ever get to the rest since this was the only one in the library system, but I'm not exactly chomping at the bit.
2.5 stars

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jailbait is an interesting book for its reworking of exploited all-female hero groups like Charlie's Angels into a superhero comic drama. The story makes fun of annoying tropes like the patriarchal boss and hiring for hotness while also delivering a no tolerance message about combatting predatory behavior and showing a love of Crisis on Infinite Earths related characters (I think? We don't read the same comics but now I want to track down the ones that Mary Jo Pehl likes). The realistic fully realized female characters and their interior conflicts are rendered as larger than life American Gladiator style heroes to enhance the feeling that real women are better than the cardboard stereotypes in service of men often done ham handedly by narrative media stories.

[Niche · Rating 2 out of 5]

Superhuman To Catch a Predator

I guess I was expecting something in a tongue-in-cheek campy risqué feminist satire of the superhero genre. This felt more like a hard boiled superhero worked for a creepy Charlie's Angels To Catch a Predator mashup. The storyboarding and dialog didn't do a great job of conveying the story. It felt like I was reading an issue in the middle of a series.

[Jason McCracken · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad art and even worse writing.

[Ash · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dumb