Archive for the Western Comic/Comix Category


LGBTQ: Dates Anthology, Volume 2

October 17th, 2017

In Summer 2016, I had the pleasure of reviewing the historical fiction anthology, Dates. Well, it was such a hit that editors Zora Gilbert and Cat Parra started working on a second collection. Today, we’re looking at Dates Anthology, Volume 2.

The sequel was even better than the original. The mix of prose and text appealed to me. You may know that I have, for many years collected doujinshi put together by groups of people in Japan. One of the features of these privately published journals (or “coterie literary magazines,” as the online translators like to say) is the mix of text and comics. Like ‘zines, doujinshi give creators a way to express their work in any media that suits them. Switching back and forth from text stories to comics gave me a chance to change the pace and tone, so that I didn’t just read this through without stopping to enjoy a bite here or there.

In general, I found most of the stories to be good and a surprising number were excellent, with a pleasant diversity of time, place, ethnicity, perspective and voice.  The stories were strong – many of them focusing on gender presentation, gender roles and gender identity, as well as sexuality. I quite liked Gwen C. Katz’s “The Ibex Tattoo” and “Flowers in the Wind” by A. D’Amico hit me just right.

The art was tighter than in the first volume, too. A number of the stories did wonderful things with the art. Marie-Ann Dt’s “Inkblot” and Nicole Figer’s “A Bard’s Tale” really piqued my interest with their art styles and Effie Lee’s “Kantha was just lovely from beginning to end.

Putting together an anthology is always hard. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little on the one side or the other to get the thing to print. Dates 2 doesn’t seem to have had to make any such sacrifices. It’s a really good read from front to back. I can’t think of a story I didn’t enjoy – that’s pretty amazing. ^_^ Like it’s predecessor, Dates 2 was crowdfunded (a campaign to which I contributed right away) and is available in print and digital formats. As a backer, I also received bonus comics and wallpapers all of which will find a place in my image collection.

All in all a very satisfying anthology.

Ratings:

Overall – 9 

I’m absolutely thrilled to see more great work from the folks at Margins Publishing!





Image Comics to publish BINGO LOVE!

October 10th, 2017

Some big news out of NYCC this weekend! Image Comics is going to be publishing Bingo Love.  the book that I’m calling THE comic of 2018. 

Created and written by Tee Franklin, with art by Jenn St-Onge, and colors by Joy San.  Bingo Love is a historical tale of a black lesbian couple from when they meet, how they are separated and how they are able to be together after a lifetime apart. Here’s the official synopsis:

Bingo Love is a LGBTQ romance story that spans over 60 years. A chance meeting at church bingo in 1963 brings Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray together. Through their formative years, these two women develop feelings for each other and finally profess their love for one another.

Unfortunately, these young lovebirds end up separated, as they are caught kissing by Mari’s grandmother. Being forbidden from seeing each other isn’t punishment enough as both Mari and Hazel are forced into marriages with men whom they do not love.

But fate had another plan. Decades later, now in their mid 60’s, Hazel and Mari are reunited, again at a bingo hall, and their love for each other is still alive. Together again, the sexagenarians decide to divorce their husbands and live the rest of their lives together as wife and wife…despite the objections of their children and grandchildren.
Good luck!

It is every kind of wonderful all rolled up in a book of adorable and awesome and I cannot WAIT to read it. I was a backer of the Kickstarter and I’m planning on buying a physical copy or two as well.

So congrats to the Bingo Love team and yay us, for being able to get this book even more widely distributed.  I’m telling you, this will be the book of 2018. It will be available on Valentines’ Day 2018, don’t forget to pre-order with your local comic store!





LGBTQ Comic: Legend of Korra: Turf Wars, Part One

August 11th, 2017

 Legend of Korra: Turf Wars is a continuation of the Legend of Korra animated series, co-created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, illustrated by Irene Koh, published by Dark Horse Comics. Picking up immediately after the end of the cartoon, the story begins with Korra and Asami in the spirit world. Their vacation comes to an abrupt end when they encounter a hostile spirit, but, it turns out that their presence is needed in the human world. 

In their absence, there have been several major issues that have developed in and around Republic City. Refugees from the wars at the end of the cartoon remain unhoused and the mayor is uninterested in helping them beyond the minimum amount of support. he can provide while he focuses on reelection. Unsurprisingly, morale is low and tensions are high. A real estate developer with ties to organized crime is attempting to exploit the land around the new spirit portal, with plans to turn the spirit realm into a destination vacation. The spirits are not at all pleased with the idea. Every single sentence in this paragraph should make you roll your eyes and sigh with frustration at the timeliness of the narrative, (excepting, perhaps, the bit about the spirits and I’m not sure that isn’t true either.) As I pointed out today on Twitter, have we learned nothing from decades of Scooby-Doo reruns? Real estate developers are always the bad guys. Meanwhile Bolin and Mako have become police officers and work with Bei Fong to maintain the always-tenuous peace in Republic City as organized crime is once again growing in power.

The set-up here is multilayered and complicated, as it always was in the cartoon. Neither Avatar: The Last Airbender nor Legend Of Korra were simple tales of good and evil. Every plot and subplot had nuance. People had complicated reasons for their actions, their motivations were human and obtuse at times and the only truly “evil” characters are ideologues who benefited from the discord sowed by their rhetoric and the people that were controlled by it. (Another sigh seems appropriate at this point.)

And above and beyond all this completely realistic human conflict of resources, energy, ideology, needs and desires, Korra and Asami are working on fitting the unit that is “them,” as a couple, into everything. 

Their first task is coming out to Korra’s family, which goes well, but when her father suggests they be cautious about letting people know about their relationship, Korra predictably takes that very personally. Tension rises between Korra and her parents and Korra and Asami. Resolution cannot come in this first volume, but I expect it will be forthcoming.

It is Kya who provides context for us all, explaining that the Water Tribe tends to keep personal business very private, while the Fire Tribe had been open to same-sex couples until Sozin had outlawed it. The Earth Tribe, we learn, moves slowly and has not yet come around to accepting same-sex relationships. The Air Tribe alone has no issues at all with human sexuality is its many forms. Kya also speaks of a girlfriend, something that is nice to have surfaced. It provides Korra and Asami a person to speak candidly with…something that will no doubt be critical in the narrative. I hope so, at any rate.

The conversation with Kya is also key because it sets the table for what will have to be any number of outings in the course of the story, both private and public  – as it is in real life. Those of us who come out don’t just do it once.  The presumption of heterosexuality is pervasive and so we’re often required to out ourselves to complete strangers just to make a simple point. It’s not hard to see how Asami will be targeted to get to the Avatar, how the Avatar’s relationship will be used against her and how all the characters we know and some we do not yet know, will be reacting to this in some way.

Korra and Aasmi’s relationship is front and center by the end of the volume, when Korra, worried that Asami is hurt, kisses her in front of a crowd of people, including Bolin and Mako. Mako’s reaction is realistically complex for completely understandable reasons.

Characters are written consistently with the way they were presented with the cartoon- – not surprising as one of the co-creators is doing the writing. If anything, because of the limited page count, they are very much the essence of themselves. Pacing is quick. This volume feels like a very brisk 2 episodes of the cartoon, with slower moments implied, rather than lingered upon. Upon a second read, I’m impressed with how much ground they covered in 80 pages. There were a lot of conversations that had to be distilled down and still be handled with layers of meaning intact.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – 0
Yuri – 10

Overall – A very solid 9

My wife asked me if this book was everything I’ve ever wanted. After some thought I said, no, it isn’t, but it is everything that this book needs to be which, in a lot of ways is much better. There’s no age or grade rating on the book cover, but it displays the Nickelodeon logo prominently and is listed as Age Range 9-12, Grade Level 4-7 on Amazon. Which makes Turf Wars the tween LGBTQ book we all needed when we were kids. A nice older gay couple and a trans character or 3, maybe a non-binary character and it’ll start approaching perfect. ^_^ 

The creative team is very aware of their role in offering up solid queer representation for young people, as they say in this Entertainment Weekly interview with Koh and DiMartino. Koh describes herself as a “bisexual Asian martial artist” and she’s bringing both ethnic and sexual/gender diversity to the characters, as she told Comic Book Resources in May. Based on my first readthroughs, I trust them to do a good job. 

I think this comic will be good for comics in general, as it is #1 in all its Amazon categories at the moment. Like Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, (still #1 in gay manga!) sales are going to walk the walk and talk the talk that diversity is not something to be scared of in the comics world, no matter how loud the naysayers are. (And really, they aren’t loud, they are just used to having the mic.)

My very very sincere thanks to Okazu Superhero Eric P for sponsoring today’s review! This was awesome for me to come home to after Yurithon, and has already become part of my “don’t miss” Yuri presentation for 2017!

I’ve already given this book a second read and probably will pick it up for a third when Book 2 is released in the beginning of 2018!





LGBTQ: Legend of Korra Turf Wars, Part One Preview on Amazon (English)

July 17th, 2017

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Eric P. we have some really exciting news today.  Legend of Korra: Turf Wars, Part One is due to hit shelves at the beginning of August and Amazon has a preview of the first chapter.

You know how I am with managing expectations, but for once, I have very high hopes that this book will break ground. And, from the glimpses I’ve had from the preview and the of-course leaked pages on the Internets, it look like our hopes will be realized. Korra and Asami will be balancing relationship and teamwork in this series. As the description reads, “In order to get through it all, Korra and Asami vow to look out for each other–but first, they’ve got to get better at being a team and a couple!”

There, they said it.

I don’t know if this is the first mainstream large publisher, commercial property to ever say that so plainly or not, but it sure is one of the biggest YA franchises to do so. And certainly the only one I can think of where the lead was the one in the same-sex relationship, not a supporting role. We still love you Willow, just you weren’t Buffy… and I see all my favorite female characters stretching back to my childhood, all the almosts and might have and should have beens starting with like Jaimie Summers in the Bionic Woman. My life is littered with crumbs of female leads that ought to have been gay… and here we are. Finally. 2017 and we finally have a lead character of major commercial franchise who is a lesbian and the relationship is with another major character, not just someone to kill off.

Enjoy the preview and wait patiently a few more weeks. ^_^

Many thanks to Eric for the heads up and for the sponsorship!

 





Western Comic: Small Favors: The Definitive Girly Porno Collection

May 29th, 2017

Colleen Coover’s “Girly porno comic” Small Favors was first published by Eros Comix in the early 2000s. I had heard of it, of course, but by the time I was interested in getting it, it was already out of print, woops.  So, although I’ve known about and seen some of Small Favors for years, I hadn’t ever had a chance to read all of it.

2017 has already been an amazing year for lesbian comics and Yuri manga. We have comic essays and romances that aren’t exploitative or annoying (and romances that are exploitative or annoying) but we were missing some good old-fashioned porn. Well…that’s been taken care of now.  Small Favors: The Definitive Girly Porno Collection is exactly what it says in the title. 

Annie is a young woman who enjoy masturbation. A lot. So much that the Queen of her Conscience feels Annie is wasting her life. She sets Nibbil, her own daughter, to inhibit Annie. Unfortunately, Nibbil is just as interested in sex as Annie and together they sex it up in a variety of ways. As the story develops, Annie and Nibbil add a friend, Sage, to their fun and eventually get to include Annie’s neighbor and another emissary from the Queen.

The art is very competent and tends to lean toward fun over anything else. Backgrounds and characters are rendered in simple black and white line work, with hand-drawn shadows and backgrounds. A very “western” looking comic. The later chapters include a full-color story, sketches, character studies and mini-comics. This collection includes all the published chapters of Small Favors and a previously unpublished chapter. It also has a delightful Foreword by Kelly Sue DeConnick.

This is a very sex-positive book. If there is a moral, it’ “Sex is fun, we should all have more sex.” And the sex is also very explicit and creative. Nibbil’s natural size is that of a small figurine, which allows her to enjoy Annie very up close. She can also take on a human sized form. But along with being sex-positive, this comic is also love-positive. Nibbil and Annie love each other, but that doesn’t mean they have sex exclusively with each other. Their friends are welcome to join in.

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story – 7 It’s porn, so a set-up each chapter, rather than a “story” per se.
Characters – 8 All likeable, which is good, because we spend a lot of very intimate time with them.
Service – 100 It’s women having sex. Sometimes group sex.
Yuri – 9 It’s women in love who are not lesbians, per se.

Overall – 8

If you’re in the mood for some fairly explicit lesbian sex in a variety of places, poses, positions, costumes and with a varying number of participants, you will enjoy the heck out of Small Favors.