This week on View from the Gutters our topic work is Jem and the Holograms, by Kelly Thompson, Sophie Campbell, and M. Victoria Robado. This series is a revival, as well as a reimagining, of the outrageous 80s cartoon series of the same title.

It features the musical and romantic adventures of the eponymous band, composed of Jerrica Benton, along with her sisters Kimber, Aja, and Shana. Following the recent death of their father, Jerrica—who suffers from crippling stage fright—uncovers his secret holographic supercomputer, Synergy, which she uses to transform into a glamorous and glittering alter-ego: Jem. The group then competes with rival band The Misfits for fortune and fame.

The series is light and colorful, and strongly targeted towards younger readers.

This week we are adding a new feature to View from the Gutters. Each month one of our episodes will be devoted to a "redemption pick"—a previously pitched but unselected title picked by one of our hosts. We'll be taking it in turns so that each of our six regular hosts gets two redemption picks each year. Our goal is to recover some of the books that have previously been benched due to our voting process, but which we feel will prompt meaningful discussion.

Therefore, as selected by Joe for Episode 150 we will be reading Top 10, by Alan Moore.

In our recommendation section our hosts nominated In Real Life, Bitch Planet, ODY-C, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier for discussion on our next episode, and our selected title is ODY-C. We will read that title for Episode 151.

Our hosts for this episode are Tobiah Panshin, Joe Preti, Missy Brinks-Hoppe, and Kirbotron 2000. Missy is the co-host of Fake Geek Girls, "a podcast looking at nerdy pop culture from both a fan and critical perspective." We thank her greatly for joining us on this episode.