12 Days of Anime: Why Fairy Tales Keep Getting Stranger

I'm a fan of fairy tales, not the overly-tired retellings that pass for fairy tales in YA but actual stories about the strange and the prices it exacts upon it's characters. I have lots of opinions on fairy tales in general but the most pertinent one to this posting is that people simply aren't really making them, I can go an entire year and find only one or two amongst ALL of the media I consume.

I suppose people aren't doing it because it's hard. Fairy tales are full of weird turns and odd twists of logic which is something I'd generally only use to describe the worst books I read these days. I started thinking about all of this when I heard that Edgar Allen Poe wrote what's basically a 1001 Nights fanfic (called The 1002nd Night I believe) where Scheherazade spends her 1002nd night telling her husband strange tales of the modern day, so strange that he executes her for it!

I believe that this would be called "the opposite of a fix-fic".

But following the notion that fairy tales should be strange and unknowable to at least a degree, then yes Flip Flappers is absolutely a fairy tale. I was hesitant to call it one at first (wondering if I was overly influenced by it's cute ending sequence with fairy tale images) but the shifting conflict and worlds of the final few episodes convinced me that, while there's really no other story to compare it to in this regard, Flip Flappers is a strange fairy tale of courage, determination, and love. 

Webcomic Review: Check Please!

I started reading this comic between late July and early September, I believe I got this recommendation from one of the many "webcomic recommendation" links I posted, and then realized I had actually seen this comic earlier. I had actually seen a banner for this at Otakon but since it was an image of Bittle holding a pie I couldn’t tell if it was about hockey or about a waiter whose customers just never seemed to leave/pay. I mention this not because I think it’s a bad banner advertisement, just because I think this would be a hilarious AU and someone should get on that now please!

Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu

Comic Review: This One Summer

Well I feel topical for once, this book came out last year but it's getting awards now in 2015, I had honestly been wondering if it was a bit award winner when I saw just how many copies my library had. And the author's names are familiar but I don't think I've actually read anything else by them, I do remember trying Skim in college but the main character was going through a life just so different from my own (both in terms of experience and how she mentally handled stress and set-back) that I decided it was better to drop the book than to be continually frustrated by it. That was not the case here thankfully, although there was still some frustration involved

This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

Anime Review: Love Bullet: Yuri Kuma Arashi

Going into the winter 2015 anime season there wasn't much I was looking forward to but this was one of the title; Kuniko Ikuhara's latest work which he described as "Attack on Titan but with bears" and I thought he was talking figuratively, that it was going to be as big a hit as AoT which did seem off. But no, as with all of his works I should've looked at it a little bit more literally, it really was a series about girls, a dividing wall, and on the other side of it bears.

Love Bullet: Yuri Kuma Arashi

Webcomic Review: Girls With Slingshots

Well this wasn't the original plan but since the comic did end just last week it's perfect timing for me! If you follow the RSS feed the comic is now repeating with it's very earliest strips (but now in color) and holy cow I didn't even remember that the art was so different at first, so if anyone else is looking at the front page for the first time in a while and is confused that would be why, it's not your memory it's actually the comic!

Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

Webcomic Review: As the Crow Flies

I had completely forgotten until I started writing this review but Gillman was another artist I met briefly at Small Press Expo last year (seriously, if you are in the District/Maryland/Northern Virginia area you need to go to this con) and they laughed a little bit when I said that I thought the story was wrapping up soon. To me it seemed as if the major reveals had been made and we were being set up for a climax with a quick downturn but Gillman said that there's a lot left to this story, I'm hoping now that I haven't jumped the gun and reviewed it too early.

As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman

Manga Review: Wandering Son (volume four)

This review is late in more than one sense of the word, can you believe I placed a hold on this volume back in December, shortly after I reviewed volume 3, and even though I was first in line I didn't get the call saying the book was in until July? I know that libraries are big, complicated systems with procedures to follow but that's flat out ridiculous, I had assumed that if the book was already in the catalog it wouldn't be long until it was on the shelves. So, yet again I am behind in the series and it has to once again gently remind me why I'm so frustrated about it.

Wandering Son (volume 4) by Shimura Takako

Webcomic Review Month: As the Crow Flies

As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman

Charlie was looking forward to her hiking/camping trip but upon arriving realizes that she's the only non-white girl in this Christian group. She's already queer and a teenager, can she end up enjoying her week in this white centric world after all?

The first thing that stood out to me about this story was the art, while I follow a number of comics that are partially or wholly traditionally created (I feel like I've seen a shift back to traditional inking with some of the newer pens out there actually) Gillman's colored pencil art still stands out and as someone who dabbled in colored pencils for years I'm amazed at how even she's able to keep her tones and gradients. She also has a really good grasp on drawing a variety of body types and faces which is great since this is a story that lives and dies by how well the reader can connect with the characters (Charlie is our only point of view character and certainly the main one but if you have a really well-fleshed out main character and paper-thin side characters then the entire story will collapse). I felt that she really captured the feeling of a lot of summer camps too, you're there, a bit excited and a bit worried about what the heck is going to happen to you over the next week, and the adults are telling you some of the things and intentionally keeping a few secrets. You're not so sure how well you're going to like all of this, especially when Charlie notes that the hiking expedition her group is going on is following the footsteps of a bunch of white settler women who were seeking to "washing away the dirt and whitening our souls", but there's not much help for that now.  

I truly am looking forward to whatever the resolution of this comic ends up being since I have no clue at all what it'll be. Many times stories fall into patterns, tropes, so I can tell whose going to fall in love with who and who will die but this isn't that kind of story (well, I believe that Charlie has a crush on one of her leaders but since I could have sworn I read elsewhere she's asexual and the about page calls her queer I'm understandably confused). Perhaps Charlie will be able to discover a truth for herself that gives her life more meaning, perhaps the other people in the group will expand their world views a bit, heck I expect some kind of disaster but I don't know if it'll be emotional or a physical, real-world one! It's not a suspenseful story but it is a gripping one, Gillman has created a very nuanced character with Charlie and I hope she's able to have a good time on this trip after all.

Manga Review: Wandering Son (volume three)

I was at a different library than usual recently and had just enough time to browse their comics section before I went racing for my bus and was delighting to see that they had the third volume in this series, no more multi-year waits for me! And I discovered that another library has the fourth volume so expect a review on that one in the next month or so, now if only I can convince the library to pick up the fifth and sixth volumes soon and I'll be a happy reader.

Wandering Son (volume three) by Shimura Takako

Book Review: Adaption

Some people might be curious why, since I liked Malinda Lo's Ash and Huntress so much, it took me so long to get to her latest (as of reading, not as of writing) novel. Well two reasons, one libraries and two since this was of a completely opposite genre (modern day sci-fi with a tad bit of horror) I was a tad worried that it just wouldn't be good, plenty of people out there can write in multiple genres just fine and plenty of people don't do so well.  But when I finally came across it at the library I made sure to grab it because what's the worst that can happen? Get very freaked out by dead birds it turns out, reading this and When We Wake back to back was not one of my more clever moves.....


Adaption by Malinda Lo

I'm not 100% sure what is going on here but I do remember being turned off a bit by the cover and that was part of the reason I took so long to read it. I think I know which event the cover is trying to recapture but the problem is that it's completely the wrong color (because I guess dank green makes for a better sci-fi color than egg yolk yellow) which just makes me even grumpier about it.

Summary: Reese is in a less than ideal mood, having both embarrassed herself in front of her crush David and the two of them did poorly in their debate competition and that's when things get, odd. Airports across the country as shut down as thousands of crazed birds cause crashes and even on the ground things are tense as they attempt to drive home instead. And that's where things get even stranger for the two of them....

The Good: Well it turns out that Lo is one of the authors who can successfully tell a story in more than one genre, hurray! Once we got past the creepy birds part I rather liked the story, as someone whose used to stories throwing crazy plot twists out there* I was able to figure out what was going on but never felt like the reveals were too obvious or that the characters were being too dumb in order to draw out the tension. I liked Reese as a character and I liked her relationship with David, they both felt like nice ordinary teens where ordinary didn't mean unobservant or boring

The Bad: As mentioned earlier, this is hardly a bad thing but I do not recommend reading the early part of the book at night, or during periods of the year where there are large migratory bird flocks (which is right now, oops). There is a reason for the bird craziness and that I did have a bit of a hard time swallowing, what happened happened on such a huge scale that it was just a bit too much for my suspension of disbelief (there are one or two other reasons but I can't figure out how to talk about them while still being vague so I'll just mention that I had multiple problems with it). And I must express annoyance, since this has come up in a number of recently produced stories I've seen recently, not just here, about the characters having never heard of bisexuality before. Reese at least seemed completely unfamiliar with the term and it's just, well, you're telling me that she lives in a rather liberal part of the country, a few years in the future (ie, even more progressive on the social front), and has never heard that you can be something that's not straight or gay? In a fictional setting you must get the little details right to keep the readers believing in the story and, while Reese's confusion over her identity was understandable her initial reaction to it just wasn't**.


In the end I shall give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars for being interesting yet having just enough details not quite work for me to adore it. The sequel just came out last month and I will be on the look-out for it at my local library although I doubt I'll be able to get to it before the end of the year since these things do take time. 





*I mean, y'all have seen some of the anime I've reviewed right?
** I'll admit that it also bothered me on a more personal level since I'm not gay or straight, I'm asexual, which I hadn't heard of by Reese's age but I had heard about bisexuality (which I'm going to use for lack of a better term, even though pansexual might be more accurate in the end). So it was frustrating and left me going "really? Man you at least are something people have heard of, this is just frustrating!"

Manga Review: Wandering Son (volume 2)

Goodness it's been a while since I last talked about this series, and since I'm not sure if my current library system has volumes three and beyond it might be quite a while again before my next review. But at least all of this material is still new to me, I believe the material the anime covered started in volume 5 (ie, the ones that people who actually purchase the books are receiving now) so I still have a ways to go before I'm in familiar territory!

Wandering Son by Shimura Takako

Summary: Shuuichi and Yoshino continue to muddle their way through life as elementary school kids and deal with gender and sexuality issues that would confuse many a full grown adult.

The Good: I remember feeling frustrated after the first volume since something just seemed off and, when I looked online, found that many other people felt that way and that the story really hit it's stride around the third volume. Perhaps I just approached the manga differently this time, I don't feel like I did, but I felt like this was a much stronger, more interesting work with a firmer grasp of where it wanted to go and how to get there. The side characters were more interesting, I was able to follow the story better, I connected more with the character emotionally, it was great, I just have no idea why it changed so quickly!

The Bad: Having seen the anime I know that ultimately Yuki and her boyfriend Shiina are good people but, after a lifetime of being told not to talk to strangers as a child it still made me feel weirdly protective of Suuichi and Yoshino visiting them by themselves. Well, that and Shiina's actions, that felt almost out of character for this story and that was easily the biggest dissonance for me. I do wish that Yuki had been introduced differently, although I can't think of a way myself, but that's really a complaint I should have been making about the first volume, not this one.

The Art: Even though much time can't have passed between drawing the first two volumes I already liked the style here a bit better (it seemed more sure of itself, more polished) and it was easier to tell the side characters apart. In fact, the only compliant I have is that when I was looking up images for the review I noticed how odd the title looked and I'm a bit baffled by the word placement choice since I thought you never split up a word in a title. Although honestly I'm just as confused why I didn't notice it earlier, I must have had it piled under some other books when I wasn't reading it.

So I'm once again interested in this series and really hope it doesn't take me nearly two years to find the next volume, although I suppose in the meantime I could go rewatch the original show if Crunchyroll is still streaming it.....

Book Review: When We Wake

Took me a bit longer than I would have liked to get to this book, considering how big a fan I am of Healey's other works, but I got to it within the year which is an improvement for me! That said I was a little nervous about it, it's a completely different genre from her other books and my track record with YA science fiction is surprisingly spotty (occasionally I find books I've already read in the library and can't help but shudder and move on) but thankfully this was one of the better books.

When We Wake by Karen Healey

Summary: In the near future Tegan was an average Australian teen with family and friends she loved. And then she wakes up, horrified to find out that she was killed in a botched assassination attempt and, thanks to the forms she had signed donating her body to science, has now become the first person to be successfully woken up after 100 years of being frozen. And the world has changed in a lot of ways in 100 years but one thing that hasn't is that games of politics are still played and it seems like everyone wants Tegan on their side for less than savory reasons.

The Good: THIS is why I say that dystopias are an easy, lazy way of setting up a plot most of the time, while Tegan's new world can't precisely be called a dystopia (it doesn't have the all controlling government aspect) it is an even more deeply flawed and twisted world which makes it all the more realistic. So yes I am celebrating that this is a horribly depressing book, often when I read I think "so what point in this story would I want to live in, the beginning, middle, or end?" and here I wouldn't want to live in either of Tegan's presents, especially because of how horrifyingly real some of the things talked about (rising temperatures, first world countries dumping their pollution and garbage on third world countries and then blaming them for not having the resources to deal with it, etc). Moving on from that, I was happy to see that Tegan manages to have a best friend in here who is a girl and their not fighting over a romantic interest (I'm sad how rarely this seems to happen in fiction these days) and that ended up being my favorite relationship of the story (second to Tegan's relationship with the scientist who revived her). And that also sums up the world she woke up in, while it might be crap the social issues that plague us today have gone a long way towards being resolved and she sees this as the one bright hope in this brave new world of hers.

The Bad: While the ending is a bit ambiguous I was alright with that but I've now heard that Healey is working on a companion novel which retells the story from the point of view of one of the other main characters and I'm suspicious of it. Will this add anything new to the story or continue on past where this one ended? Which would indicate something was missing in the first place and, well, I rather like the ambiguous ending so I'm a bit worried at how this book plans to end. Strictly speaking this isn't a problem with WWW but I've known a few series, mostly anime, where a sequel has completely messed up the ending of the previous installment so I'm twice burned extra shy now. Other than that, some groups did come off as rather flat and it's a bit hard to believe that there seems to be so little activism/people weren't able to prevent what happened to the world (since there truly is some amazing technology in the works right now to prevent the world from becoming an overheated and polluted wasteland) but I'm a bit of an optimist so I'm supposed to question whenever someone creates a story with a bleak world and apathetic people.

So I give this book 4 out of 5 stars for being heart-breaking in a good way and something which caused me to need a lot of chocolate and cute fluffy things to read when I was done, that seems to be the trend with the 2013 books I've read this year (looking at you The Summer Prince). 

Book Review: The Summer Prince

This is a book that I was really hoping to have a chance to read (futuristic Brazil sci-fi? I'm in!) and I was surprised that I found it so quickly at my not-so-local library, although I feel like they either do a better job at getting YA books faster or at least make their new books more visible. And even without already knowing about this book I think I would have picked it up anyway because of how gorgeous the cover is, normally I'm a little leary of putting green and yellow right next to each other (it can make things look sickly really easy) but, if the cover here doesn't fully convey it, it makes the cover just pop and I hope a lot of other people pick it up for either of those reasons.


The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Summary: 400 years ago the world became a nuclear wasteland and while humanity still survives most of the world does so in the ruins of it’s former glory. One of the few exceptions to this is the city-state of Palmares  Tres, a giant city in modern day Brazil which has thrived because of it's isolation and rules made by all of its ruling ladies. While they resist much technology being created by the outside world they have embraced some of it and become extraordinarily long lived and because of that few young people have any say in anything about their world. Many want their world to change but few succeed in the way that June and Enki manage, her by being a modern artist whose work is compelling and different and him by becoming the Summer King, the highest position any man in the city can hold which occurs once every five years and after a year of power will be ritually killed in order to reaffirm the authority of Palmares Tres' queen. 

The Good: Johnson creates a futuristic setting that is neither dystopian or utopian (that’s actually a dystopia) which helps make it one of the most realistic science-fiction settings I’ve ever come across. This isn’t a little detail either, the struggles and conflicts of the city are the center and heart of this story, it's Enki's reason for becoming the Summer King in the first place, and Johnson succeeds wildly in portraying a city where ordinary people live and are unsure of what future they should follow and where politicians have a mix of their own and everyone else's wishes as their goal. As for all the other parts of the setting, I’m a sucker for a story with strong settings and the way that the technology is integrated into everything and is explained so casually is what really makes the story for me. Johnson creates a setting that is mostly foreign to me but does it with such confidence and vivid descriptions that I had no trouble accepting it* and, once I figured out how the city was laid out, visualizing it. I also loved the kind of art June did, in real life I'm not a big fan of modern art (or post-modern, I'm not completely sure which one hers is) but two things made it work here. One is that I'm simply of tired that nearly every time there's a character in any story whose an artist that they normally sketch or paint, it just gets a bit tedious. And secondly because June's art makes so much sense in this setting, it's wild, it's thought provoking, it makes use of the materials in and around her city. It ends up being a perfect fit with her character, Palmares Tres, and with the entire story.  

The Bad: There was a lot of unfamiliar slang used in the book (I don’t know if it’s real, Brazilian slang or made up for the sake of the book) and I wish that there had been a small glossary in the back since I was never able to pick up on what some of the words meant when they were only used once or twice. I also wish the ending had been a slight bit clearer, I had a few questions which I don't I was supposed to have and just a paragraph or two could have cleared them up (unless I was supposed to have these specific questions in which case obviously the story succeeded). Finally, by the end I had a few problems with how Enki grew and developed. Some people might consider this a spoiler so I shall try to be as vague as possible, Enki does A Thing which ultimately results in a change in character, I'm not exactly sure it can even be called development since he doesn't have full control or choice over changing, and I felt like this short-changed the story in some ways. I'm entirely sure that this was all deliberately done, Enki is supposed to be a tragic character after all, when I remember where he started and the goals he had then, versus what he was like by the very end well, I wish that had been pulled off a little differently.


So for a story with an amazing setting, interesting characters (all of whom are non-white I should note, both due to the gene mods and from growing up in a culture which has more than just American or European influences), and two prominent gay relationships (plus a take on a love triangle which is a bit different than usual) I'm giving this book four out of five stars, plan on buying it someday and plan on checking out Johnson's other works. And while recommending this I'd also like to mention some books that I was reminded of while reading, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Zarah the Windseeker which also has a great, vivid setting whose inspiration was completely foreign to me yet I fell in love with due to how confidently Okorafor-Mbachu described it and Karen Healey's The Shattering but for slightly spoilery reasons, it and The Summer Prince have one rather large plot element in common but it's done completely differently. 






 
*well, except for the one detail of people having children after they turn 50 and much later than that. But, given the passing mention of gene mods and that people’s skin tones must fit into a certain range of colors I can easily hand wave that and say that they just do something either to the uterus or eggs to make this viable. And really, I have just one problem with the technology out of a story which is chock-full of it and is one of the main plot drivers? That’s amazing!

Comic Review: Off*beat (volume one)

So apparently I was out of it back in February since I hadn't heard that some of TokyoPop's former employees had formed a new company, Chromatic Press, and that they had plans to do a kickstarter to try and fund the final volume in one of TokyoPop's OEL series which apparently a lot of people liked, Offbeat. I first heard about all of this when the kickstarter launched and I was torn, I don't have enough money right now to support a series I've never even read, on the other hand it sounded like something I'd like and I had realized when looking at it that the creator also was doing a webcomic I like, Witch's Quarry. So I didn't pledge, if it had looked like they needed just a few more people to get it to the goal I would have pitched in, and when I got back home and went to my local library there I found a very battered copy of the first volume just sitting on top of the comic section as if it was waiting for me. Sadly they don't have the second volume, although I might poke around at some of the other libraries near me to see if they do, but hey, one volume is totally enough for me to tell if I want to read more.


Off*beat by Jen Lee Quick

Summary: Tory is smarter than your average high schooler and instead of using his vast intellect to cure cancer or such he is currently using it to stalk his new neighbor who lives across the street. In Tory's defense, Colin does seem to live under some strange circumstances and when Tory's other neighbor manages to dig up some dirt it seems like Tory might actually be onto something.

The Good: At this point the story is still very ambiguous if there really is some great, sci-fi-ish conspiracy involving Colin or if Tory is just being way too imaginative and with the way it's set up I'm not going to be disappointed no matter which way it turns out. I have to admit it's a bit odd that I'm more amused than skeeved out over Tory stalking Colin, my normal reaction, I guess it's the way it's set up here, and because the reader knows that it's more-or-less harmless, but regardless I need to commend Quick for making me like a main character that I normally would dislike.

The Bad: The early timeskip threw me a little bit and I do wish it had been less big, it's a bit hard to accept that Tory remained obsessed about Colin for that long even though he had no leads on him and hadn't discovered anything. Thankfully I think we're also going to actually learn some stuff about Colin in the next volume (because right now he feels more flat that mysterious just due to a lack of panel time), honestly I'm glad that I didn't read this when TokyoPop was originally putting it out since the wait and possibility of never finishing the series would have killed me.  

The Art: There's actually not a very big change in style between this and Witch's Quarry which surprised me a little bit but here it's already pretty solid. The backgrounds/scene setting shots are a bit basic but there were only a few times I had trouble figuring out the panel sequence. All of the characters look distinct although the girls look a bit odd, they look a bit more cartoony than the guys and I hope that they look a little more natural in the next volume.

So, giving this a recommendation, I'm dying to track down the next volume and the final one when it's released, and now I'm more curious than ever about Chromatic Press's other works, fingers crossed that they succeed and are around for a while!

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Take Off! Tripping Over You

So when I was originally getting my list of comics to talk about for this month I noticed that I had a lot of BL and not much GL, even though I do like both equally, and was going to talk in one of these intros how that was interesting and how it seemed to be because a lot of the BL manga published in the US was rather explicit, hence I turned to webcomics, but the GL was just fine. Then JManga shut down and threw a wrench in my plans because that's where most of the ALC titles I know of went on and I've heard what numbers they did, 300 volumes for a top-selling book which was just enough to cover translations, they aren't going to be putting these in print and that's certainly not enough money to build their own platform, maintain/advertise for it and still bring over new stuff. So now all I can say is that I have had a few people recommend me places to find more gl, a list which I throughly perused (and just didn't like most of the titles on there) and a tumblr which I haven't had time to tackle yet, and would love if people knew of any specific webcomics since my reading is a tad more unbalanced than I would like. And one a similar note, Daniella Orihuela-Gruber of All About Manga recently bought quite a bit of BL and has resolved to review a volume a day until she's done and she's managed to find some good stuff and some crappy stuff, totally recommending people check out her reviews especially considering just how much crappy BL there is out there to avoid. 


Take Off! by Meaghan Carter

In a world called Inbetween a great race between many different creatures and their riders is at the heart of everyone's lives so when Grey the dragon's rider is killed the four heads of Inbetween are scrambling to find him a replacement as fast as they can. They settle on Cassidy, a girl from Earth with some problems but it seems like they're going to have an even larger problem to get the still-grieving Grey to accept a new rider.

It took me a little while to get into this one but once Grey and Cassidy started to accept each other (key word is start, as of writing they're still not on great terms) the story started to fit together. The other characters are interesting as well and the plot, while nothing exceptionally original, works for the moment and is paced well. The art looks fine too, it's been solid since the beginning and while the coloring and shading are a bit on the simple side it looks like a deliberate stylistic choice, not like Carter is unskilled. So far the story seems to have a good idea of where it's going, how it's going to get there, and who it's characters are so even though I don't have a lot to say now I'm sure that by this time next year I'd have to restrain myself to keep the review quick.

Take Off! can be read online and does not have a print version as of writing. 

Tripping Over You by Suzana H. and Owen W

Liam is a bit of a high strung kind of person, frustrated by a lot of people including his roommate (who keeps dragging him along to events to be a third wheel to help him out) and his sorta-friend Milo. But Milo seems to have some distinct feelings for Liam and, well, as long as the rest of the school doesn't find out and make his life hell with bullying, he's okay with the feelings he has back for Milo. 

Like a couple of other webcomics I've talked about over the years, this comic is one where the first chapter doesn't quite hit the mark and then suddenly does starting in the second chapter with no trouble at all which I guess goes to show that both art and writing have rather steep learning curves. By the second chapter the creators seem more comfortable with the characters and know how to place them in the story, how to make them interact, and all the relationships (both romantic and platonic) start to progress quite nicely. I'll admit that I'm biased between romances that focus more on making the relationship work rather than "will they or won't they?" and that's what we have here. I also like the direction the art takes starting with the second chapter, the font is changed to something a bit more legible and the lines become a bit less sketchy (also, I honestly wasn't 100% sure if Liam was the person with the black hair as seen in the top picture when I read the first chapter and he thankfully starts looking a bit more like that in the second chapter as well). I do think that you can tell from the first chapter if you'll like the series or not, the mood and tone don't change very much but if you try the first chapter and aren't sure how you feel about it try a few pages of the second chapter too. 


Tripping Over You can be read online and actually has a kickstarter going right now for the print copy, looks like they easily passed their goal and have about a month to go if you want to try out the comic first and then scrape together the funds to help out.


2012 "T" comics
2011 "T" comics

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Penny Dreadful, Polterguys Prince of Cats, Princess Princess

Whew, got the biggest batch of reviews for the month here, even though I'm a little sad I don't find as many great webcomics every year I have to admit it's nice that I don't have to make as many huge posts as this. Oh and the ComicMix March Madness tournament is still going on so if that's your thing make sure to go out and vote, think they've reached the quarter-final round as of writing this so it's going to finish up pretty soon!


Penny Dreadful by Maggie G Vicknair

The 20th century is barely a decade old and Penny Hart has found herself lost and alone in it. Through a series of strange events she finds herself in the employ of the Harker Institute of Super-Natural Studies and while she finds herself starting to enjoy her new life of adventure it's still a bit much to simply take in a stride.

As a heads up, this is one the webcomics which has a fairly dramatic art shift early on, apparently Vicknair completely changed the way she drew it starting in chapter two, so if you don't like the art very much in chapter one be sure to look at a later chapter before writing off the comic for that reason (and of course the art style does change and become more sophisticated as the story progresses as it does in practically every comic out there). As for the characters and plot I'm really fond of this one since the characters are just a touch sarcastic (well, more than a touch at times) and being a sarcastic person myself I occasionally wonder why characters aren't commenting on how strange their lives are. Despite this little extra self-awareness the copious supernatural elements of the story manage to feel just right for the story without anything out of place (although a little more exposition about how magic works in this world would be nice, I'm assuming that's simply coming later) and the story seems to be slowly revealing that there is a greater plot lurking behind the events of the individual chapters, can't wait to see what's going to happen!


Penny Dreadful can be read online and does not have a print version as of writing.


Polterguys by Laurianne Uy and Nathan Go

Fans of shojo manga will undoubtedly find something familiar about Polterguys but in a fun, enjoyable way. Like many a heroine, Bree finds herself living with a bevy of cute guys under strange circumstances but her's are a bit stranger than normal. While she's simply moved out of the dorms for a bit of piece and quiet the five guys living in her old house are all dead, none of whom can remember how they got that way, and there are demons out there who will happily hunt down a lost soul and send it off to wherever those souls go. In a moment of impulse Bree puts her own life on the line to give the boys a chance to find peace before they move on but can she really do anything to help? 

Bree is a likeable heroine whose relatable, has spunk, and also has a rather realistic experience of having college turn out to be different than she expected (although most of us didn’t have demons and ghosts to make the shift even harder). This first book neatly wraps up one plot while leaving plenty more for future installments and introduces a new one which might prove even more interesting in the end. I'm not sure when the comic is going to start updating again (as far as I can tell, from twitter and tumblr, I think Uy and Go have started outlining it but haven't gotten much farther so it's likely to be a while) but even if it's only as consistent as this first installment then I think it'll be worth the wait.

Polterguys can be read for free online or purchased as a book.


Prince of Cats by Kori M. Handwerker

Lee might be able to talk to cats but frankly that isn't a really big problem or concern in his life currently, high school is. In a small, conservative town where you can be rich or poor but never anything but straight and that certainly doesn't help when his relationship with his best friend Frank starts to change and neither of them feels quite sure where they want, or even expect, it to end up.

Yep this is another story with queer characters in it and, while there hasn't been anything that would be considered graphic by anyone so far, the about page does indicate that there will be some non-graphic sex scenes later on, readers with delicate sensibilities or a habit of reading webcomics at work be warned. Funny enough this is also yet another comic done in watercolors which I'm seeing more and more of these days and I rather like it. Obviously this has no impact on the story but I still like the feeling it gives. Getting to the actual story, it's a little slow moving and awkward but honestly that sums up a lot of high school as well. I am happy to hear that there are going to be other gender/sexual identities present in the story as well (since it always seems odd to me whenever you have a large cast of characters and every single one of them is straight and Prince of Cats is developing a pretty large cast of background characters), although a bit sad that it sounds like there will be an asexual character but they won't even recognize what they are in story. I can certainly relate to that, and it sounds like they'll be a minor character in the story anyway, but I at least hope I can recognize who it is.

Prince of Cats can be read online and the first few chapters are also available in print form.

Princess Princess by StrangelyKatie

I know I said that I wasn't covering any finished comics this year but I completely missed that this one was in fact finished so I'll just slip it in here. Princess Princess is a rather quick tale about a princess locked up in a tower whose recused by, well, another princess. The story is based on that simple idea but fleshes out its two princesses quite well into distinctly different people with their own problems and lives, it doesn't just change one of them from a prince and call that a day. It's cute, quick, funny, yes the two girls do like each other as well, and smarter than you'd expect so I recommend everyone to check it out over here if you have some time. And while you're there I'd also recommend another of Katie's comic's, which I've seen around on tumblr before but hadn't realized it was hers, which is even shorter and nicely bittersweet.


2012 "P" comics

2011 "P" comic (which weirdly enough also finished up within hours of me writing about it, I'm amused by the similar timing anyway)

Webcomic Review Month 2013: O Human Star

Sorry about no review yesterday folks, Mondays are quite tiresome with my schedule and I thought I needed to also write a little post on tumblr about something that would come up in this review (so I wouldn't just ramble on in the footnotes) but then it turned out that I didn't have too much to say on the topic after all. I am going to probably push back the rest of the reviews by a day to compensate (although this means I'm supposed to post another review next Monday, that might not work). In any case, let's just get to the review!


O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti

16 years ago Al Sterling died and despite all the work he had done in robotics he never got to see the robot revolution. That is, until he wakes up those 16 years later in a robotic body with an artificial, yet complete copy of his mind and no idea why he was brought back. His old partner Brendan also has no clue why or even how Al was resurrected since he already tried many years ago and got a rather different result.

The premise alone for this story has a ton of things in it that I like, it's a seemingly happy future (or at least, not one where the world has gotten worse), it's got a large focus on technology (personally I like my science fiction to have a focus on, well, the science, hence part of my problem with dystopias, which was going to be my tumblr post for those curious), and queer characters! All of this has blended together very well and even though the story is only on it's third chapter it's already fleshed out it's main three characters incredibly well and has good pacing. I feel like I'm seeing more comics that are partially colored, like this one where instead of being in grayscale everything is in well, blue-scale (or red-scale for the flashbacks) and I rather like this trend since seeing everything in black and white gets boring after a while and I know that coloring a single page takes hours. Delliquanti uses a wide range of shades on each page, the character all look different from each other, and the backgrounds strike a nice balance between being simple and yet still working*. This one grabbed me from the start and I can't wait to see where it eventually goes!


O Human Star can be read online and the first two chapters are in print. Also, like TJ and Amal, while there isn't any outright pornography the story doesn't bother to hide that two of the guys are having sex so some of the pages certainly NSFW, just wait until you get home to read them.





*as opposed to "simple because the artist doesn't know how to draw backgrounds" which is completely understandable but I'd rather an artist draw backgrounds and improve rather than just leaving them blank, although that's REALLY a personal preference.

Webcomic Review Month 2013: The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal

WELL it's been an exciting 24 hours in the in the comic-reading section of the internet and sadly I don't mean the fun kind of exciting. Last night google announced that they would be discontinuing their RSS reader, google reader, come July and I saw a lot of webcomic artists going "but wait, I use that to read comics!" I never used google reader, found the interface a little too clunky, I use feeder which is a plugin for Chrome which works for me since I subscribe mainly to webcomics feeds and I want to look at every single update that comes through. But after seeing what some alternate feed aggregators can do I think I'm going to try out some of the alternates that people were suggesting for following blogs, hope everyone finds a good fit before July!
And then this morning I woke up to an email in my inbox saying that JManga was shutting down by the end of May and absolutely no explanation for that. Manga fans can imagine the conversations that followed on social media/various websites (hell they may have been part of it) and as per usual one of the factors was blaming pirates/scanlators/people who want to read comics for free for it. It was the phrasing of that last group of people, people who think that comics should be free, that irked me a bit since, while I agree with the statement, there seemed to be an accidental implication that if you don't have the money you can't have access to fiction and to suck it up. As someone who is now on their third year of promoting free-to-read webcomics and gets most of their other material from legal streaming sites and libraries I think you can guess what my opinion on that is. There's not much more to say on the matter that hasn't been said elsewhere, constructive or mocking, so I'm just gonna continue doing what I've been doing and tell y'all about some pretty cool comics that are out there, for free, no DRM, and this one in particular is also available in print!


The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal by EK Weaver

Amal has had a bad day, he's called off his arranged marriage and come out to his traditional parents in the process and can't even remember what he did that night. But when he wakes up he realizes that he's agreed to go on a cross-country trip with a complete stranger, TJ, paying for the way. It may be crazy but Amal needs to get to Providence anyway to see his little sister graduate which is coming up soon so why not?

I'll admit it, I started to read this comic once before but got a bit worried by the mature readers sign and backed off*. Thankfully I did give it another shot and from what I recall there is implied sex but nothing on screen. Suggestive scenes, enough to for me to easily see why Weaver warns people about importing the print copy, but this story is not "porn with plot", the mature warning page lays it out rather well. That said, this story has fantastic character development, vital considering the story is entirely character driven, and the story gives it's setting much more detail than I see many realistic fiction stories do. Sure many of them will consider the importance of the location on the character but I haven't seen one take the year into consideration so much and I love when stories do that. The art is great (yet another reason your run of the mill yaoi manga feels like a slap in the face after this, the characters look completely distinct, all of them!), it's paced well, stays on schedule, seems to be a good chunk of the way through the story already, I'm saying people should check this out even if a story about two guys, who happen to have sex with each other, isn't really your thing because this is a pretty good thing.


As noted earlier, TJ & Amal  is available for reading online and the first two of three planned books are in print and it's also been translated into half a dozen other languages, all of which can be found on the right hand sidebar of the front page. 

2012 "L" comic

2011 "L" comic



*I just don't like reading sex scenes, kinda not relevant to my interests, see the Ignition Zero post from a few days back.

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Knights Errant

Meant to talk about this a few days ago but it slipped my mind, I seem to have finally found a partial solution to keeping up with all my comics. I've mentioned in the past that when I started reading webcomics (using Safari as my browser) I just made bookmark folders but that hasn't really worked for Firefox or Chrome. But this winter I installed an RSS feed collector right into Chrome and about 80, maybe 90% of my webcomics these days have RSS feeds so I've been able to keep up with everything nicely. Some comics don't have RSS feeds, or have ones but don't seem to be working (and whenever I mention it in the comments section I never an answer) and for those I still use twitter/facebook as a way to follow them but thankfully most of those comics also update promptly. I've seen more people using feed aggregator sites, such as Comic Rocket and Ink Outbreak, in the past year and while I can see the appeal I just follow entirely too many comics and when I find a new one I don't want to go to all the hassle to see if it's on the site already or not. In any case, onto tonight's review!


Knights Errant by Jennifer "theyoungdoyley" Doyle

Wilfrid is a mercenary who rather likes being one and is thrilled when a war breaks out between the nations of Aster-Morgaria and Vetal. They join a group of mercenaries known as the Errant Knights due to their reputation and discovers that their young commander, Oswald Dytel, is even more intriguing than he first appears.

Normally I wouldn't read a comic like this because, well, the characters are asses. But they are well-developed, amusing, and interesting asses and I like a story with good character development so why not! The summary mentions a war going on and while that's certainly a driving force lurking in the background of the story, so far everything has been rather character driven, although if the prologue is any indication that plot will kick in sooner or later, for better or for worse. The art style varies quite a bit from section to section, I have yet to figure out if there's a pattern or reason why some pages are in full color and others are not (believe me I have been trying for months now) but regardless of whatever style or color the pages are in the art is dynamic, expressive, and as it goes on increasingly detailed as well. I find the art style rather attractive, and thankfully not overly gorey, so while a bit inconsistent it's not jarring enough to take most readers out of the story. 


Knights Errant can be read on it's website and does not seem to have a print edition yet, although I'm sure one is coming down the road. It can also be read online in Russian which appears to be only a few pages behind the English version.

One thing that does have me worried about this comic is how it has a rather complicated set of character relationships and politics, which is awesome, but it hasn't updated in a bit and I'm worried that I'm going to start forgetting who was who and where they stand. And this is a worry I have with a lot of webcomics actually, the one great failing of webcomics is how they update so much more slowly than print comics (some might put out a full chapter a month, very few, and others will barely get a chapter out in a year) and that just completely messes with the pacing. I'm sure this comic will start updating again soon, I'm not too worried about that, but it does make me ruminate on what the proper way to read it is, there's no point in reading scattered updates if I know that I'll forget what happened in a month but I want to read it regardless, maybe someday I'll find a happy compromise between the two of them.


2012 "K" Comic

2011 "J" Comic
2011 "K" Comic

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Ignition Zero, In The Air

Skipping a few more letters and weirdly enough this is the first year I've had comics that start with I and none of them started within the past year. I guess it just goes to show just how much is out there and how long it can take to track down really awesome comics. 

Ignition Zero by Noel Arthur Heimpel

Robbie and Orson met online years ago and really clicked but due a rather large different in location they never met until Robbie moved up to Maryland to go to school near Orson and hang out. At which point he discovers that a lot of the stories he had heard from Orson over the years are not only crazy but true, it's going to take Robbie a bit longer to adjust to living in Glory than he expected it seems.

Plenty of the webcomics I read I can't remember where exactly I got the recommendation from but this one I remember clearly, it was from tumblr with a person posting that holy crap, they found a story with asexual main characters in that. Not only that but it's an urban fantasy story, with cool watercolor art, where the fact that Robbie and Orson are aces isn't the main point, it's just part of their lives. Considering how few stories I've found out there with asexual characters (and the fact that I take, issue with half of them) this was pretty amazing and I'm thrilled that Heimpel decided to make that issue only part of the story and instead focus on the more exciting part, the fey and a secret part of the city that few people know about. The comic has been on hiatus for a bit lately but it's scheduled to return sometime between the end of March and early June, can't wait for it to come back!

Ignition Zero can be read online on its website and should be out in print rather soon asa well.

In The Air by Brenda Hickey

Sandra is a bit spacey for a high school student, it seems like half of the time she has her head in the clouds and the other half of the time she's being picked on by some of her classmates. Neither of these things changes when a cute guy named Fred moves in next door, instead this seems to create new problems in her life, ones that are slightly more magical than romantic ones.

Not sure if I'm cheating with this series or not since I did read everything that was available of it last summer but then back in November Hickey changed sites (because originally she hosted her comic on wirepop which no longer exists) and she's re-uploading the comic with three pages a week. As the comic currently stands there is nowhere enough information for me to be happy doing a review on it and it looks like it's going to be almost a year before she starts posting new material (there was a way for returning readers to see the next chapter before it was posted but I wasn't able to get it to work/realized that would mean it would be even longer until there were new updates for me). But I have read the first three chapters and did like them, like Fragile from the other day it felt like a comic that took a lot of the elements of shojo manga to use in it's own work but not slavishly follow them at the expense of it's own creativity. The first few chapters also seemed to be paced well, revealed some backstory involving Sandra and Fred, started the main conflict of the story, it was a strong enough story that I want to recommend to others. It's just, like Ignition Zero above, don't feel bad if you can't try out the story right now and that it might be a few months until you can, that's probably for the best anyway.

In the Air can be read on its own site and you can purchase the print version with the first five chapters as well if you like what's already been put up.



2012 "G" comics
2011 "G" comics

2012 "H" comics
2011 "H" comics