In 2012, Sparkler Monthly had a bold vision – it was going to be the jousei manga and comic magazine we needed. For years, it was. In print and online, Sparkler Monthly incubated new creators whose work would be focused towards female readers. They paid creators and put out a wide variety of interesting work. Among the stories in their pages was Denise Schroeder’s Before You Go, a girl-meets-girl Yuri story. You can still read this comic for free online, just click the link.
As part of a wrap-up Kickstarter campaign, Chromatic Press put out a collected edition of Before You Go. I wanted to to take a moment to look at this collected volume, to memorialize Sparkler Monthly and thank everyone on the team at Chromatic Press for being ahead of their time.
Sadie and Robin meet one rainy day, waiting for the train. They see each other from time to time, get to know one another and end up going out. They move in together, have communication problems and resolve them. They live happily ever after,
In the final chapter, in which Robin introduces Sadie to her parents, we can see the kernel of less happy, more fraught story that was set aside for the much more light-hearted and happy one we end with…I thank editor Lillian Diaz-Przybyl for suggesting the baggage be shed, before we were burdened with it. The little black hole of Robin’s near hysteria at Sadie meeting her parents becomes an ignorable personality trait, rather than a dismal plot complication. So may years have passed since Yuri came to our shores and a story about self-loathing and parental disapproval might be real…but it’s a drag and what place does it really even have other than self-flagellation in our entertainment? Yes, of course, some people may want to see their experiences and their trauma represented, but I could also argue that there is a place for that and a light-hearted Yuri romance might not be that place. Surely not every queer romance needs to wallow in the old toxicity or stereotypes? (I say this, knowing full well that I’ll be writing a review shortly about this very topic. ^_^)
Schroeder’s art visibly improves as the story goes on, which is really quite charming. Sadie and Robin at the end truly are not the same people they were at the beginning of the story. ^_^ The creator has some nice insight to her artistic choices in the back of this volume.
When I spoke with Denise Schroeder many years ago, she said at the time that she wrote this because she hadn’t seen anyone else do it. Of course, here at Okazu, we had already at that point, reviewed many stories like it, but there were fewer in English. Now of course, I can barely keep up with all the Yuri coming out of Japan, much less English…and we’ve got sub-genres(!). Even so, there’s something admirable in Schroeder’s efforts in bringing together a female couple in an English-language magazine that had a large audience of BL fans, and her shifting the story away from a predictable dramatic pathway to a much appreciated one of acceptance and love.
Ratings:
Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – 9
Overall – 8
Thank you to all the folks at Chromatic Press for making this volume reality. Your work was always something I looked forward to. ^+^
