From the back cover: “Pre-law student Samantha Beagley’s life has always followed a certain path: the one she planned. However, on her 18th birthday, the arrival of a very special present brings with it a whole galaxy full of weird, wild people, places and things! Suddenly, this control-freak finds herself on the run from the intergalactic feds on a desperately hilarious quest to find a stolen treasure – and prevent the Earth’s destruction!”

Grand Theft Galaxy starts off like many stories: totally normal. Samantha is pretty ordinary girl doing pretty ordinary things – perhaps even more so because she has everything planned out like you wouldn’t believe. But that all changes pretty quickly as everything she’s ever known comes undone. Apparently, her parents are in a lot of trouble because they are intergalactic super thieves, stealing many an expensive/priceless item from many an angry victim! The thing is, until her 18th birthday, Samantha thought her parents were perfectly normal people, and now she find out they’re aliens. To top it off, that also means she herself is an alien. From that point on, her perfectly planned out life spirals out of control and becomes almost too full of surprises galore.

The story is both funny and redeeming. The redeeming factor is the biggest lesson the story teaches: It’s okay to let go a little sometimes – not everything has to be planned and perfect. Throughout the book, Samantha is pretty stressed out and doesn’t like having her plans ruined, but almost starts to learn to enjoy herself better as she learns to be okay with surprises. We could all use a moment to remember that everything isn’t perfect and we shouldn’t worry so much. Besides that, it’s hilarious to see a complete control freak lose control of everything, and this manga allows for just that.

Grand Theft Galaxy was originally created in North America, so it has a very American influence on both story and art, but of course still incorporates the manga style of the Japanese. There is a lot of craziness in the art style – lots of super deformed faces, aliens, and other general wackiness. It’s not a serious book at all – it’s meant to be a lot of fun and the drawings help to push that concept to the forefront. The text is an especially good size and therefore an ease to read. The flow of the story through the art is also noticeably easy to follow – something that is always easy to appreciate. As an added benefit/bonus, the back of the book contains all sorts of great extras including an image gallery/pre-production work and a whole different strip from an upcoming book series, “Battle of the Bands!”

IN SUMMARY:
Grand Theft Galaxy is a often humorous romp with more twists and turns than any control freak should have to face! Just seeing the main character's reactions to the things she's made to deal with are funny enough to make this one worth picking up.