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I Am Not Okay With This - The original comic that the sadly-incomplete Netflix series was based on. Despite this having a definitive ending, I think the Netflix series added a lot of character and personality to it—this version lacks the strong voice for the main character that the actress provided, and none of the supporting cast feel nearly as real.
Is This How You See Me? - Maggie and Hopey go to a punk rock reunion in their hometown. It’s a very close-in, slow-moving soap-opera kind of comic, and it’s by the co-creator of Love & Rockets and using some of the characters from that series, so that tracks. The influence of the Archie house style on the artwork is also very strong, especially when the characters mug for the camera.
God and Science - Another by the same author (Jaime Hernandez) and also a Love & Rockets side-story, this one revolving around several all-female superhero teams and focusing on the “Legion of Substitute Heroes” analogue team some years after they officially retired.
Juliet Takes a Breath – Apparently an adaptation of a prose novel, this is the story of a gay Hispanic college girl trying to explore her sexuality and running face-first into the problems of intersectionality during an “internship” with a feminist writer in Portland. Very much not “for” me (which is okay!), but it also feels like some of the characters change abruptly between scenes to make the setpieces work; and I wonder if they were more fleshed out in the original novel.
What If We Were – A series of one-shot character experiments that turns into an ongoing story: Two friends (one straight, one gay) play a talking game called “What if we were” and express their personalities via what they’d be like as mad scientists or Vikings. Cute, a little random.
The Avant-Guards - A new girl transfers to the artsy private school and gets cajoled into the brand-new basketball team a quirky group of friends are trying to get off the ground. The fact that the team organizer has a bright and blatant crush on her doesn’t surprise anyone. Friendships are formed and queer relationships are teased; this is the first volume of an ongoing series that might have some legs.
The Lie and How We told It - Old friends reunite and come to grips with them both being queer now in this bizarrely-illustrated standalone piece. It’s very abstract; proportions change in every panel and the heads are often tiny, and the use of color is…creative. I give them credit for trying something different, especially to differentiate another “talking heads slice-of-life” comic, but while I thought the story had some pathos the art pained me.
Save Yourself – Gigi is a geeky, video-gaming-playing shut-in until her siblings drag her out to their queer café and she runs into a shapeshifting alien dragon-woman and accidentally learns the truth about the seemingly-heroic magical girls “The Lovely Trio.” In the course of only four issues, the false heroes are defeated, Earth is saved, and Gigi successfully finds love. (Complaint: The small type they chose for the word balloons made this hard to read on my ReMarkable.)
Witchy Vol. 1 - The first volume of the story of a girl in a world where everyone has magic, but the natural length of your hair determines your potential for it. After her long-haired father was killed by “witch-burners” who feared his power, she hid her hair and never developed her talent. There’s clearly a deep lore the author has worked out from this queer-metaphor concept and I’d be interested in reading more should I stumble upon it. (Also, there’s an actual trans character in the supporting cast, which is the more likely reason this book was put in this collection.)
…So then I found Witchy Vol. 2 at the local library, and it continues to be cute. The second volume mostly centers around Nyneve finding a craftsman who teaches her how to make a flying broom, with some bumps and life lessons along the way. Interestingly, a major part of this process involves making offerings to the spirits, by way of offering boxes that I’m familiar with from my trip to Bali years ago. (Author Ariel Slamet Ries is apparently Australian.)
Renegade Rule - A standalone story about a VR eSports team who play an arena-fighter game called “Renegade Rule.” They’re all women, they’re all queer, and while the in-game hijinks are entertaining, the real meat of the story is their banter and various crushes/rivalries with the extremely queer competitors in the national tournament. Realistic? No. Entertaining? Absolutely.
Stone Fruit - A slice-of-life story about two women who are trying to work through their damage with their families, and a little girl (one’s niece) who adores them both and just wants to run around pretending to be a monster. Don’t get put off by the art style in the first half-chapter; the monster-forms pretty much disappear after that. Fortunately or unfortunately, this isn’t a comic about monsters roaming the woods, it’s a story about lesbians and their sisters and their emotional damage.
Girl Haven - The standalone story of a kid named Ash whose mother mysteriously left. When the school’s Pride Club comes over to see mom’s old art studio, it turns out that her stories of an “only for girls” magical fantasy land weren’t so make-believe. As the forward states, this is a story about gender, but also a story about legacies and the mistakes parents make. (I’m not entirely sure how to interpret the final villain, but my best guess is that the mom had issues with gender she couldn’t ever come to terms with.)
Love Is Love - An anthology collection following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, that’s a collection of 1-4 page stories from a huge number of artists…all mourning. Which is fair, and I hope this raised a lot of money for charity in its first printing, but it’s painfully repetitive in that it keeps repeatedly hitting the same pain point. I couldn’t finish it.
Specter Inspectors - A fun story about a “scooby gang” of ghost chasers doing a podcast who accidentally get one of their number possessed by a demon and have to unravel the mysterious history of the town it happens in. It’s also an adorable gay love story with some solid wit.
Overall: From this batch, The Avant-Guards, Witchy, Renegade Rule, and Specter Inspectors were all relatively lighthearted, fun stories that I enjoyed and would recommend. Most of the “artier” stuff is a hard sell, honestly. And there’s plenty more to go from this bundle, including a whole bunch of Archie stuff.
Is This How You See Me? - Maggie and Hopey go to a punk rock reunion in their hometown. It’s a very close-in, slow-moving soap-opera kind of comic, and it’s by the co-creator of Love & Rockets and using some of the characters from that series, so that tracks. The influence of the Archie house style on the artwork is also very strong, especially when the characters mug for the camera.
God and Science - Another by the same author (Jaime Hernandez) and also a Love & Rockets side-story, this one revolving around several all-female superhero teams and focusing on the “Legion of Substitute Heroes” analogue team some years after they officially retired.
Juliet Takes a Breath – Apparently an adaptation of a prose novel, this is the story of a gay Hispanic college girl trying to explore her sexuality and running face-first into the problems of intersectionality during an “internship” with a feminist writer in Portland. Very much not “for” me (which is okay!), but it also feels like some of the characters change abruptly between scenes to make the setpieces work; and I wonder if they were more fleshed out in the original novel.
What If We Were – A series of one-shot character experiments that turns into an ongoing story: Two friends (one straight, one gay) play a talking game called “What if we were” and express their personalities via what they’d be like as mad scientists or Vikings. Cute, a little random.
The Avant-Guards - A new girl transfers to the artsy private school and gets cajoled into the brand-new basketball team a quirky group of friends are trying to get off the ground. The fact that the team organizer has a bright and blatant crush on her doesn’t surprise anyone. Friendships are formed and queer relationships are teased; this is the first volume of an ongoing series that might have some legs.
The Lie and How We told It - Old friends reunite and come to grips with them both being queer now in this bizarrely-illustrated standalone piece. It’s very abstract; proportions change in every panel and the heads are often tiny, and the use of color is…creative. I give them credit for trying something different, especially to differentiate another “talking heads slice-of-life” comic, but while I thought the story had some pathos the art pained me.
Save Yourself – Gigi is a geeky, video-gaming-playing shut-in until her siblings drag her out to their queer café and she runs into a shapeshifting alien dragon-woman and accidentally learns the truth about the seemingly-heroic magical girls “The Lovely Trio.” In the course of only four issues, the false heroes are defeated, Earth is saved, and Gigi successfully finds love. (Complaint: The small type they chose for the word balloons made this hard to read on my ReMarkable.)
Witchy Vol. 1 - The first volume of the story of a girl in a world where everyone has magic, but the natural length of your hair determines your potential for it. After her long-haired father was killed by “witch-burners” who feared his power, she hid her hair and never developed her talent. There’s clearly a deep lore the author has worked out from this queer-metaphor concept and I’d be interested in reading more should I stumble upon it. (Also, there’s an actual trans character in the supporting cast, which is the more likely reason this book was put in this collection.)
…So then I found Witchy Vol. 2 at the local library, and it continues to be cute. The second volume mostly centers around Nyneve finding a craftsman who teaches her how to make a flying broom, with some bumps and life lessons along the way. Interestingly, a major part of this process involves making offerings to the spirits, by way of offering boxes that I’m familiar with from my trip to Bali years ago. (Author Ariel Slamet Ries is apparently Australian.)
Renegade Rule - A standalone story about a VR eSports team who play an arena-fighter game called “Renegade Rule.” They’re all women, they’re all queer, and while the in-game hijinks are entertaining, the real meat of the story is their banter and various crushes/rivalries with the extremely queer competitors in the national tournament. Realistic? No. Entertaining? Absolutely.
Stone Fruit - A slice-of-life story about two women who are trying to work through their damage with their families, and a little girl (one’s niece) who adores them both and just wants to run around pretending to be a monster. Don’t get put off by the art style in the first half-chapter; the monster-forms pretty much disappear after that. Fortunately or unfortunately, this isn’t a comic about monsters roaming the woods, it’s a story about lesbians and their sisters and their emotional damage.
Girl Haven - The standalone story of a kid named Ash whose mother mysteriously left. When the school’s Pride Club comes over to see mom’s old art studio, it turns out that her stories of an “only for girls” magical fantasy land weren’t so make-believe. As the forward states, this is a story about gender, but also a story about legacies and the mistakes parents make. (I’m not entirely sure how to interpret the final villain, but my best guess is that the mom had issues with gender she couldn’t ever come to terms with.)
Love Is Love - An anthology collection following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, that’s a collection of 1-4 page stories from a huge number of artists…all mourning. Which is fair, and I hope this raised a lot of money for charity in its first printing, but it’s painfully repetitive in that it keeps repeatedly hitting the same pain point. I couldn’t finish it.
Specter Inspectors - A fun story about a “scooby gang” of ghost chasers doing a podcast who accidentally get one of their number possessed by a demon and have to unravel the mysterious history of the town it happens in. It’s also an adorable gay love story with some solid wit.
Overall: From this batch, The Avant-Guards, Witchy, Renegade Rule, and Specter Inspectors were all relatively lighthearted, fun stories that I enjoyed and would recommend. Most of the “artier” stuff is a hard sell, honestly. And there’s plenty more to go from this bundle, including a whole bunch of Archie stuff.
