Love is Love Graphic Novel Review

Love is LoveLove is Love edited by Marc Andreyko
Rating: 2/5 stars

This book took me forever to finish it. I wanted stories by queer creators celebrating queerness. In the wake of tragedy and for about two months after the Pulse shooting, all I wanted was to immerse myself in stories of queerness. To wrap myself around the tales of our culture, and this was one of the book sitting in my to-read pile.

My first reading slowdown was because so many of these stories focus on the horror of the Pulse shooting, and it was too much. The juxtaposition of repeated trauma from real life and media’s tendency to bury your gays — the trope where queer characters are killed off — was too much. I can’t help but feel survivors of any tragedy would want to celebrate life over force us to endure more death. I expected one or two comics to feature the dead, or meditations on them, but it’s an entire third of the book.

The second slowdown was when it was clear so many stories were by cishet straight people, missing nuances of queer life and meditating on their allyship or how to talk to their kids. Continue reading “Love is Love Graphic Novel Review”

The Best and the Worst of 2015 Comic Books

Yes, the time has come to say goodbye to 2015 and ring in 2016. Here’s a look back at the Best and the Worst of 2015* Comic Books.

The Best On-Going Series

Bitch Planet1. Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Val De Landro, and Robert Wilson IV
Average rating: 5/5

I love this blatantly intersectional feminist book so much. It packs a solid punch with each and every issue. Though it makes me sad that the book is late almost every month. However, the work and finesse that DeConnick and De Landro put into it make it layered, relevant, and scarily close to our reality. Not to mention the fantabulous essays in the back of every issue.

Read my reviews of Bitch Planet.

Lumberjanes2. Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters, Brooke Allen, Kat Leyh, Brittney Williams, and Carolyn Nowak
Average rating: 4.9/5

This series was a runaway hit. I’m so happy for the success Lumberjanes has had, both in making it an ongoing series and for its creators, who are doing other amazing projects too. At its heart, this is a book about female friendship and that critical friendship during adolescence. Sure, there are dinosaurs, magical gods, mermaids, etc., but the core is the relationships between the girls. My only wish would be that when I was a girl, there was a great book like this.

Love live Lumberjanes! Friendship to the max!

Continue reading “The Best and the Worst of 2015 Comic Books”

Fairest: Of Men and Mice Vol 4 Graphic Novel Review

Fairest: Of Men and Mice Vol 4Erica Gives This Comic Four StarsFairest: Of Men and Mice Vol 4 by Marc Andreyko
Art: Shawn McManus

This book kind of passed the Fairest test, which is the requirement that the tales be about women. Cinderella and Snow White were at the heart of the tale, though Marcel, Ramayan, Crispin, and three blind mice, along with Fairy Godmother and Leigh factor largely into the story. This book also hinges a bit on the other Fables tales, particularly the one where they discover that Fairy Godmother has gone bad/has alzheimer’s and the last Fables trade where one of the young girls discovers a bunch of evil rats.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how excited I got that Cinderella was going to India, and there wasn’t any culture appropriation and we even had Indian Fables, including the fabulous Ramayan, join in. However, there was a cover where Cinderella was portrayed as a Hindu goddess with multiple arms and holding her shoes. Fail.

There was, however, a big win for diversity. Continue reading “Fairest: Of Men and Mice Vol 4 Graphic Novel Review”