Archive for the Western Comic/Comix Category


Wayward Comic, #1 (English)

August 17th, 2014

150013_603727_3Yesterday, on the week’s Yuri Network News report, I mentioned a new comic by Jim Zub, Steve Cummings and John Rauch called Wayward. Today, thanks to Jim Zub’s generosity, I am able to tell you all about Issue 1.

Without preamble, we meet Rori Lane, the half-Irish, half-Japanese protagonist on her way to Japan to move in with her mother, after trying to live with her father in Ireland; something that wasn’t working out, she assures us. Upon arrival, Rori immediately has a strange thing happen – when she wishes to know where a thing is, the roads mark themselves for her. It is obvious to us that Rori’s feelings of Japan being “home” to her is not entirely just wishful thinking.

Rori reunites with her mother and again, the next morning, strange things happen to her. I won’t spoil anything, but it’s worth noting that this series includes creatures from both ancient Japanese mythology and modern Japanese comic mythology.

Let me get the few negatives out of the way first. For us, an audience steeped in Japanese manga culture, there is ever so slightly a “zOMG, Japan is so alien!” a feel to the first issue. The author’s note contains a comment about how Japan embraces it’s strangeness…guess they’ve never been to London. Even lines about how many people there are ring strangely off to me. If you’ve ever been in any city, anywhere in the world, I can’t see Tokyo seeming that much more crowded. (OTOH, Rori has been living in Ireland, and I will give the creators the benefit of the doubt and imagine she’s a suburban girl.) So, maybe, if you’re not all wide-eyed and misty about exotic Japan, this might rub you the wrong way. I found it merely something to note, nothing that ruined the experience for me. IF, however, you know a person who loves the idea of Japan, but hasn’t read 14 million stories about school festivals and confessions on the school roof, this could be a great title to suggest.

That minor thing out of the way, let me talk about the positives. The first, major and most positive thing about Wayward is Rori. She’s a teen girl, written and drawn by a bunch of guys and there is nothing “trying too hard” about her at all. She’s written the way we always say we want – like a character, not “like a girl.” So, despite the fact that there are a lot of stylistic shorthands in the storytelling, Rori doesn’t come off as a girl written by a guy who is thinking, “Gee, what do girls like?” And jet lag. Yes. It is just like that.

The characters and action is well-drawn and appealing. Who doesn’t want to fight Japanese mythological creatures and have mysterious powers and a magical sidekick? We all do, you know we all do. ^_^

As soon as I wrap up here, I’m calling my LCS and pre-ordering Wayward, because I want to know what happens. And that, above all things, is the sign of a good comic.

Wayward #1 is a good comic.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Character – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – 0 as of yet

Overall – 8

I was almost immediately super in love with Wayward, because –  plane to the train to the subway and Rori steps out of the station into Ikebukuro, my own home away from home. ^_^ (psst, writers, Friendly Limousine bus service or the Narita Express go direct.)

It’ll make a nice change of pace from romance manga. As a creator-owned work, is a good way to support comics creators directly. (And, that’s two terrific female-lead comics from Image, along with Rocket Girl. Go Image!) It’s interesting to note that between My Little Pony, Lumberjanes, Rocket Girl and Wayward, I am now reading more American comics again than I have since the 1980s. And none of them are DC or Marvel.





LGBTQ Comic: The Legend of Bold Riley, Continued (English)

July 7th, 2014

Bold-Riley-2-463x700If you, like me, have been impatiently waiting for the next installments of the wonderful series The Legend of Bold Riley, written by Leia Weathington and drawn by a number of artists, your wait is over! Three new issues have been released following our favorite dashing adventurer!

In Issue 1,  The Talking Bone, Riley encounters a bone that regales her with a tale of love lost. So, of course, she wants to reunite it with its love and, of course, it’s more complicated than it seems.

Issue 2, Warp and Weft, finds Riley sleeping on a moor alone. And, as everyone knows, when you sleep alone on a moor, strange things happen to you. In this case, Riley meets an old woman whose tapestries tell stories, of the past and maybe the future.  I was fortunate enough to receive a reviewer’s copy of this and Zack Giallongo’s art is perfect for the story. In many ways, it reminded me of the opening to the quite epic anime Erin, (which if you have not watched is absolutely worth a watching. It’s streaming on Crunchyroll.) And the cover (pictured here) makes Riley look so darn cool.

In Issue 3, The Lion Jawed, having left her grief behind her, Riley encounters more visions and a new purpose, as she heads off to find adventure (and beautiful women) in Kabumzala.

As sword and sorcery short stories go, I find Bold Riley to be just about perfect. Each artist gives me the sensation of listening to well-known stories told by different storytellers.  The only thing missing from the series at this point is a Pirate Queen to be Riley’s frenemy. ^_^

One of the million things I love about Northwest Press is the variety of formats their work is available in. Paper pamphlet comics, e-book, PDF, iPad ePub and CBZ…and each linked issue has a few pages up for you to take a look at before you buy. The collected volume should be out next holiday season, but throw a few bucks NWP’s way and get more amazing LGBTQ comics now.

Ratings:

Art –  is always dependent upon your taste
Story – 9 I love this stuff
Characters – 9 I love this stuff
Service – Variable

Overall – 9 for Lesbian Adventurer.

Seriously, I love this stuff.





Western Comic: Namesake, Volume 1 (English)

May 30th, 2014

namesakevol1cover_largeSummers seem to me to be the perfect time for breaking out all the cool-female-character comics I’m reading, and fun lesbian novels, along with other things of interest. So, along with Katherine’s Guest Review Wednesday, I want to take a moment to tell you about the last of the comics I picked up at TCAF this year.

 Namesake, by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton is about a young woman named Emma, who finds herself literally dragged into a story where she’ll need all her wits to survive. Emma is a Namesake, one of a groups of people with the ability to jump in an out of narratives. Without training, or seemingly, reason, Emma is dragged away from her world after a terrible event at the local library, where she was picking up her little sister, and dumped in a place no one in their right mind would ever expect to land. Emma finds herself in Oz.

Because the main portion of this volume of Namesake takes place in Oz, there is a great deal of exposition in which we are quickly caught up on the Oz cannon and filled in on current events in Oz. Almost immediately we meet old friends and new enemies, while Emma tries to figure out what the hell is going on.

For completely sensible reasons,  the second half of the first volume necessarily becomes an Oz fanfic, which might become tiresome if you are not a fan of Baum’s world. Nonetheless, there are some extremely interesting elements in this volume that kept me reading. Emma’s not a super strong protagonist out of the gate, but the librarian we meet in the beginning is. For various reasons I’m hanging on to see if she’ll be back. Also far stronger than Emma is her younger sister Elaine and in the final extra chapter of the volume, something occurs which dragged me right back into the story and has motivated me to get Volume 2.

And, aside from the individual characters, the world of the Namesakes is fascinating. We get the barest glimpse of the larger story in Volume 1. I hope that Volume 2 will gives us more of an idea of what is going on outside Oz. The opening of the first volume leads me to believe we will..and that there’s a lot to learn.

The art is very strong with a mostly black & white feel, with strategic use of color. At times, the color leaves one wondering what the significance is, which I quite like, as I do not believe anything we’re seeing is arbitrary.

Namesake is a webcomic that has been collected into several ebook and printt volumes, so you can read it from the beginning and decide if you too want to know the secret of the Namesakes.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 7

Overall – 7 with tons of potential





LGTQ Comic: Lumberjanes (English) Guest Review by Katherine H.

May 28th, 2014

ljanes1It’s my favorite day of the week – Guest Review Wednesday! And today, we welcome back the stunning, the fabulous, the one and only Katherine H. of Yuri no Boke to speak on one of the most anticipated and popular new western comics of the year, The Lumberjanes. (Which I am also reading and I assure you, it’s fantastic.) So let’s give Katherine a warm welcome back and settle in for the ride. The podium is yours, Katherine!

Right now, I am following two ongoing non-manga comic book series- the new Ms. Marvel, which is great, and Lumberjanes, which is super-weird and a lot of fun.

Lumberjanes being awesome is no surprise given its pedigree. It’s co-written by Noelle Stevenson, the creator of one of my favorite webcomics, Nimona. If you read Autostraddle like I do, you may have noticed that one of their writers, Grace Ellis, is Lumberjanes’ other writer.

Brooke A. Allen is this series’ illustrator and Maarta Lairo is its colorist. I’m not familiar with Allen and Lairo’s other work, but they do a great job here. Allen’s art is expressive and doesn’t skimp on details without being too busy, and the composition is well done. Allen and Lairo’s linework and coloring pop with the energy this story requires, also.

Lumberjanes is basically about a group of awesome Girl Scouts punching their way out of strange and dangerous situations at sleep away camp. Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley are spending the summer in the same cabin at the Lumberjanes sleep-away camp.

The first issue opens the story with their fighting demonic foxes after following an old woman they saw turn into a bear into the woods. Their cabin chaperone Jen is exasperated when she catches them returning, but their den mother Rosie not only doesn’t punish them, she seems to have a bead on how preternatural the forest around their camp is when they tell her what they saw.

ljanes2In issue 2, Jen takes the girls canoeing, and its becomes weird again and more awesome. Amidst all the action, two of the girls become a couple and it’s pretty adorable. I expect this series to keep handling them well given Grace’s Autostraddle-ness and how well Noelle has handled the queer characters in Nimona. Issue 2 of Lumberjanes ends with the characters underground, pretty much accepting that they’re not going to have a normal summer.

This series doesn’t take itself too seriously- there’s a lot of banter and visual gags and even potentially grim scenes have goofy moments and punchlines, like the message the foxes spell, April’s response to the dragon, and pretty much everything Ripley does. The pacing is brisk and the characters are all likable so far.

In short, you should at least try Lumberjanes if you like stories featuring featuring well-written female leads doing cool stuff- basically if you’re Okazu’s target audience. The cute lesbian couple is the cherry on top. This was originally meant to be an eight issue mini-series, but it has sold well enough to be promoted to ongoing, and I’m glad for it.

Art: 9
Story: It’s just intro so far, but for entertainment, it’s a 9
Characters: 9
Yuri/Lesbian: 7
Service: 0

Overall: 9

Erica here: I agree with every word of this review. This is a terrific comic book, one of four western comics I am currently following (along with Ms. Marvel, My Little Pony ~ Friendship is Magic, and Rocket Girl.) By far and away, Lumberjanes is the the most creative of this creative bunch.





Events: Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2014 Report

May 18th, 2014
"Chika" from Golondrina by est em at TCAF

“Chika” from Golondrina by est em at TCAF

This year Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) was held on May 10 and 11 at the Toronto Reference Library and surrounding locations. As with last year, I bought good books, met amazing people and generally had a blast.

I arrived Friday and hooked up with my roommates for the weekend, Brigid Alverson of Mangablog and Robot 6 and Johanna Draper-Carlson from Good Comics Worth Reading. The weekend activities started for me with a reception at the Japan Foundation, where Japanese manga guests  Moyocco Anno, creator of Sakuran and Happy Mania!, who was premiering her book Insufficient Direction, about her life with her husband, Neon Genesis Evangelion director Anno Hideaki; BL artist est em, creator of Golondrina, and the manga team who go by the name Himekawa Akira who are working on the My Little Pony ~ Friendship is Magic manga and are best known here for their Legend of Zelda manga adaptations, all introduced themselves to the audience, then we mixed and chatted. It was a pleasure to meet est em-sensei and also see Himekawa Akira-sensei again. ^_^

This was followed by a dinner of epic proportions, with Brigid, Johanna and myself joining fellow comics/manga journalists and reviewers, Deb Aoki of MangaComicsManga, Heidi MacDonald of The Beat, Robin Brenner from No Flying, No Tights and School Library Journal writer Eva Violin.

Girl Scouts

On Saturday, I moderated a relatively earlyish panel Art Theft! with Rachel Dukes and Katie Shanahan on how their art went from viral to stolen, what they did about it and what they might do differently knowing what they know now. It was well-attended for the venue and the panelists were great. At the end, we all agreed that we had learned something.

I hit the floor briefly between various panels and did dinner with friends, including manga blogger Sean Gaffney and a few other panels. The “Queering Comics” panel this year was *way* more balanced than last year, including at least one trans artist. I was a very little bit disappointed by the whiteness of the “Writing Comics for Women” panel, but that was remedied at the very excellent and nicely diverse “Women in Genre Comics” panel on Sunday. In fact, this last had me bolting for the floor again and buying up a bunch of the books I’ll mention in a sec.

I finished TCAF proper by moderating est em‘s Guest Panel, with translator Jocelyne Allen, followed by dinner with Sean, Johanna and Brigid, which was a terrific way to end the event!

The people are great, the panels are great, the venues are great, the food is great, Toronto is great, but the star of the show are the comics, and I thought you might want to know what I picked up while I was there. ^_^

standard-sized-single-page-templateThe first thing I snatched up were the first two issues of Sanya Anwar‘s zOMG gorgeous, throat-grabbingly compelling 1001. This is a re-thinking of the famous A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, with a more active Scheherazade. Issues 1 and 2 are up online and Sanya has said Volume 3 will be up in about a month. Her art is stunning, the story really grips you hard and shakes you up a bit and I cannot wait to read the next chapter!

Sanya also participated in  the “Women in Genre Comics” panel. One of the questions specifically asked about re-telling old myths and stories to create them in our own image. I’m excited to see what Sanya has planned for Scheherezade.

 

Lumberjanes by Stevenson Ellis Walters AllenI’ve *finally* had a chance to read The Lumberjanes, Issue 1, courtesy of Brigid, and I have every intention of nabbing up Issue 2 in which a relationship begins to happen in between following bearwomen into the woods and fighting wolves.  And other things. This is an action-packed, gosh-I wish-it-were-longer type story that I gift to my inner 11 year old.

Issue 1 starts right in the middle of an adventure and the tension doesn’t really let up, so readers are left chasing the story right from the get-go, which I completely approve of. No slow build to a thing happening here.

 

stonewall 1 - Venus by sasha steinberg

Magical Bitches by April MaligSasha Steinberg and April Malig were next to each other, so while I was chatting with them, I picked up the first of Sasha’s Stonewall series, and the first issue of April’s Magical Bitches series. This is a sarcastic send-up of the magical girl genre and the first issue is a prelude to what I hope will be a great story.

I asked Sasha about Stonewall and he said he’s working on a multi-part series detailing the weekend when the Stonewall bar became the turning point for American sexual and gender minorities. Each issue will follow a different character. Issue one starts off with Miss Venus, a teenage drag queen. The art for this issue is very mid-century American romance comics…the color choices, in particular, are stellar. Sasha discusses his influences in the back of the comic, from content to art and even has footnotes on the historical facts. Totally swoon-making. ^_^ His first two arcs, Miss Venus and Mark are available for purchase on his shop.

Sorceresses Next Door by Chad Sells and Jay Fuller

The Sorceresses Next Door by Chad Sells and Jay Fuller got me all choked up.  Read it here and see why.

Witchlight by Jessi ZabarskyReading Jessi Zabarsky’s Witchlight, I remembered why pamphlet comics drive me bat shit crazy. JUST as the story gets good, it ends and you have to wait for the next chapter!!

A teaser for Liz Prince’s Tomboy made me wish it was September already. Anyone who grew up as a tomboy will remember these situations. It’s not all bad…but it wasn’t all good, either.

 

Toccata by Shilin HuangI bought an artbook so beautiful I literally said to the artist, “Take my money. Immediately.” Breathtaking work by Shilin Huang based on her original comic Carciphona. There were some Yuri images, but really, it would not matter, the work hit my sweet spot for art. Check out the first page of Carciphona and see what I mean.

Time Travel Magic by Caitlin Major and Matthew HoddyMatthew Hoddy and Caitlin Major, who work as team Space Pyrates, had a fun little two-story collection called Time Travel Magic. Both protagonists were terrific female characters and one story has a little Yuri.

The next purchase I made comes with a somewhat strange story:

Some years ago, I was at the MoCCA event in New York City and an acquaintance mentioned that her friends had put together a collection I might like. The book was called Jardin des Lunettes. I wrote about the anthology in 2009, because I did indeed like it.

Love Lens Anthology by Love Love Hill5 years later, I am standing in another country in front of the same circle and we all have a “Really!?!” moment as I realize I am holding the sequel to that anthology, by the circle now known as Love Love Hill.

The new anthology is called Love Lens and again, Kim Hoang has created a lovely Yuri story for the collection. Do get this if you have any interest in original Yuri and want to support  Western comics creators! The Yuri story really is awfully sweet. ^_^

Fujo Sports Anthology by Love Love HillThe same circle were also selling a BL sports anthology called Fujo Sports. I read it last night and it was cute,; all the stories except one were kind of the same story…but it still was an entertaining read. ^_^

There was one Yuri story in  the collection, as well. And, honestly, the cover was worth the price. ^_^

Before You Go by Denise SchroederThe last pamphlet comic I want to mention comes from the pages of Sparkler Monthly, the English language Shoujo/Josei  manga magazine put out by ex-Tokyopop folks and great ladies Lillian Diaz-Przybyl and Lianne Sentar. They are doing *amazing* work, getting original English-language and translated short stories, manga-inspired comics, manga and voice dramas. One of their short series is recently published Yuri story Before You Go (which you can preview here and you can buy on the Sparkler shop – thanks  wandering dreamer for the heads up!) I picked up an extra copy to give away in a future contest, as well. ^_^

This story is a pretty straightforward “Story A” girl meets girls story, but it’s always lovely to have a sweet Yuri story in among all the angsty BL. ^_^

The last two books I have to mention,  I have not finished yet, but they are both oh so good.

Galaxion 1Tara Tallan‘s Galaxion, which is a story that got its start in 1983 when Tara was in 7th grade and is now on it’s 4th iteration or so as a fully drawn and written space epic graphic novel series that passes the Bechdel Test and the Friedman addendum with flying colors.

Women are leaders and fully formed and people have conversations with other people the way they do and then a plot happens! And there’s space ships and people relationships and politics and a plot. I’m really enjoying the book so far.

 

My last purchase of the show I have not yet had a chance to read, but I was so impressed by one of the creators at the “Women in Genre Comics” panel, I wanted to get it. Namesake by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton. I’m at the end of a long post, so I’ll steal the synopsis from the comic’s website:  “Namesake is the story of Emma Crewe, a woman who discovers she can visit other worlds. She finds out that these are places she already knows – fantasy and fairy lands made famous through the spoken word, literature and cinema. Her power as a Namesake forces her to act as a protagonist in these familiar stories as she figures out how to get home.” Another strong female protagonist, another compelling story.

So, here’s my takeaway…again…from TCAF. When you are looking for amazing female characters, warriors, adventurers, time-travelers, sorcerers, scouts, captains and leaders, look at the amazing work of the women and men who are making comics not necessarily carried at your local comic shop or bookstore. Check out the YA sections, look for good comics for kids, get to local comic shows (not comic collecting or collectables; the small local comics shows that are popping up everywhere, MECAF, MoCCA, Stumptown, and more. Don’t know where to start? Heidi MacDonald does “coming up this weekend” round ups on The Comics Beat and so does Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter.)

And…if you can manage it, make it to TCAF, where the world comes to sell terrific comics to people who want to read them.