Today is one of those extra-special wonderful Wednesdays – it’s a Guest Review Wednsday! And today we have a brand new Guest Reviewer, Faps! I’d like you all to welcome her warmly and comment appricatively for our new GR! The stage is yours, Faps!

Good old Rat Queens! Where else are you going to find dynamite dames drinking, drugging, doing the do, and destroying dragons? It’s what I always wanted my dungeons and dragons games to be! Not only is their crew diverse in roles, and mythical races, but in their distinct backgrounds and personalities. The include the surly warlock Hannnah, the hyperactive thief Betty, the introverted healer Dee, and the hipster swords-woman Violet. The series has started out strong. It was nominated for a couple big time awards and managed to bag a GLAAD media award. This little baby is even slated for it’s own animation.

But does it really deserve all the praise? Well the art delivers whether we’re talking about Roc Upchurch or Stjepan Sejic. For me, it’s refreshing to see women drinking, fighting, and fucking without the finger-wagging but rather it’s shown as just rowdy fun. If you’re squeamish about violence be warned! These ladies paint the town red quite literally. If you can handle assassins being smeared into a gory pulp, you’re going to find a lot of fist-pumping action but the ladies don’t come out unscathed for it.

However, there is a bit more intelligence to this story than ‘punch the baddie and celebrate with drunken fucking.’ The main plot for the first volume the ladies have to put their heads together to find out who’s been ordering hits on themselves and their fellow mercenaries by using magic, diplomacy, and a keen eye. Though not every attempt is successful.

While the story has a pretty good sense of humor, I feel as if the dialog tries too hard to be witty but usually comes off as annoying, cheesy, too referential, overly cutesy, or just downright bad. Though even with my groaning over lines like, “Worst. Assassin. Ever!”, “I’ll charm him with…uh…blood-loss…hampering wit,” and “Rat Queens put the sexy back in large wholesale slaughter!” I can’t really fault it too much because it’s in line with the fun. The friendships between the leading ladies involve some sass and arguments but deep down they’re fiercely loyal to each other. It’s very much the, “No one calls my friends cunts but me” kind of playful mentality. The characters are pretty enjoyable for the most part but I’ll confess Hannah is a bit hard to love. She doesn’t treat those around her with much respect but a change of heart maybe on the horizon. Hannah also beaver impeded our lady-loving Betty by punching her girlfriend twice and according to the book, “Did the weirdest turkey victory dance.”

Most of the main cast seems (mostly) heterosexual except for adorable, spunky Betty. Though thankfully Betty’s girlfriend, Faeyri, moves past the oddities of her friends and they start the relationship over again. At the end of the first volume 3 out of the 4 girls hook up but, lezbe honest, Faeyri is the hottest out of the partners and Betty and Faeyri are the cutest couple. The romance is minimal in the story but it’s awesome to see a kick-ass sapphically inclined main character.

While it’s not high-brow and it’s dialog can be annoying at times, it’s overall a fun, high-fantasy, action-packed story of ladies both kicking and getting butt.

Art – 9
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 2
Service – 3

Overall – 8

Erica here: Thanks Faps, for a completely different perspective than we usually have here!

You know who they are, those femme fatales who drink the tears of their victims and lie and steal and do drugs and cause mayhem…they are the Mean Girls Club. They wear ridiculously slinky dresses, beat up old men and nurses and shoot truckers to steal their truck. We all know their names…Blackie and Pinkie and Wendy and Wanda, Sweets and McQuaalude. They are the Mean Girls Club.

Ryan Heshka’s Mean Girls Club is a short, adorably, ridiculously amoral tale of 6 absurdly terrible people, with no plot per se except them being extremely amorally terrible. It was a blast. Hot pink, white, black and gray pages leave one with the impression that the story is a tale of what happens when a bunch of biker’s tattoos come to life and have some fun. ^_^

The book is part of Nobrow’s 17 x 23 project, which was developed to give young graphic artists a chance to tell their stories and springboard to other work.  I will definitely give a few of these a chance. You know how I like to support new artists.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Pinups gone wild
Story – 9 Drinking, drugs, beating the innocent, breaking into hospitals
Characters – 8 McQualuude’s a secret softy
Service – 1 Slinky dresses and decolletage
Yuri – 0 But you can tell they all have the hots for Pinky (in my imagination, but look at the way Wendy clings to her on the cover.)

Overall – 9

At under $6, this swanky 24-page firmcover doujinshi would make a great gift for the bad-girl lover in your home. It hits shelves in February.

Thanks ever so much to Nobrow Books for the review copy. I loved this book!

TV in the 1970s has the most amazing ability to be beloved in retrospect even though it was largely unwatchable then and absolutely excruciating now. Despite the obvious craptasticness of the the acting, plots, special effects and dialogue, people wax poetic about things that actually made me cringe as a child. One of those things that people love is the Wonder Woman TV show with Lynda Carter. I remember tuning each week and making cringey-face as Diana Prince pretended to be less cool than she was so as to never indicate that she was strong, powerful or much better at the job than the Steve Trevor. In the middle of a feminist wave, I found it to be just short of enraging.

But, there was a female superhero on TV. So I watched the show. Lynda Carter deserves praise. She did her best when the writing mostly threw her under the bus.

Imagine my surprise when people discussed this show as if it was, actually feminist..and good! Really? Diana spent the end of every episode lying so as to never hurt Steve’s feelings or make him feel less than the hero. This was, and is, as far as I’m concerned, pretty much the antithesis of feminism. Maybe if women spoke up about what – and how much – they actually do, and stopped trying to coddle men, there’d be more equality. Maybe. Probably not. ^_^;

In any case, I was flabbergasted that people saw Wonder Woman as a feminist icon and not just a big ball of cheesteastic 70s TV. I watched The Secrets of Isis and Shazaam, too. The fear of the terrible has never been a problem for me. ^_^ Nor am I prone to delusion about the things I enjoy. Remember the three rules of fandom here on Okazu:

Just because you like something, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

And just because something is bad doesn’t mean you can’t like it. ^_^

So when it was announced that a special comic anthology was being created to  highlight the show, I was like, yeah, okay, bring it on. Well, Wonder Woman ’77 Special #1 was kinda fun. Yes, it’is super cheesy, with Steve’s low cut dancing outfit and the dialogue, which really does sound like a reflection of the TV show, I kind of enjoyed it, despite myself.  Completely unlike Andy Mangels who writes a companion essay, a man besotted with wonder, as he might say, I liked it for it’s tacky and oh-so-70s self, and not any delusions about a bigger picture.

If you haven’t actually watched the show, but want to see it through the eyes of people who loved it, then definitely get this comic. Diana Prince is a “modern” American woman, she can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. She can save the day and never make Steve Trevor question his masculinity. She is a relic from a decade that I am so very glad is now ancient history. I look forward to one day ever getting a…something, anything…that Wonder Woman deserves. (The upcoming pissing contest between Batman and Superman is not going to be it.) But in the meantime, there was a time, a long time ago, when Wonder Woman had her own TV show and it was a lot of fun, but never good. Relive those days in Wonder Woman ’77, if you dare. ^_^

Ratings –

Overall – 8

Here’s a little piece of wisdom about fandom – geekery is not a contest. We can love ninjas and pirates! ^_^

And so I do. I can love evil psycho lesbians and magical adventures on the high seas, starring a plucky young woman without a lick of common sense, but some extraordinary luck, who manages to activate the magic-powered ship of the famous pirate Anne Bonnie. In Tim Yates’ Anne Bonnie, we meet Ariana who has been kept at home and protected from pirates and piracy her whole life and she’s ready for some adventure.

With the help of her unkillable parrot sidekick, Finn, an escaped slave with a secret and Anne Bonnie’s magical ship itself, Ariana takes on Elves, other pirates, evil mermen, the corrupt navy and the legend of Anne Bonnie herself. And where it leads her is both remarkable and a rollicking good yarn.

I know you’re going to ask, so let’s cut to the chase – yes Mary Read makes an appearance and she’s everything I ever hoped her to be. Big, brawny, muscular with no fucks to give. ^_^

I picked this up at New York Comic Con in October and was reading it very slowly so as to have more time to enjoy the story. Luckily for you, there is a preview online of this enjoyable Volume 1 and it’s available on Blue Juice Comics in print and Comixology digitally… and I gotta say, I’m definitely looking forward to Volume 2!

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – Not really, unless you count Mary’s biceps. ^_^

Overall – 9

Pirates and mermaids and magic and kicking ass on the high seas. Yes.