Comicsgirl

Last weekend, I spent a while cleaning out the closet in my room in my childhood home, which of course, meant I had to go through my comic books. Honestly, I really don’t have that large of a collection — a couple hundred at most — and it was fun to find a few things, like my Elquest collections and some of the comics I was actually sent for free way back when (like BoHoS, although I only found the second issue. I wonder what happened to Maggie Whorf).

But there’s other things that make me wonder what I was thinking when I bought them — such as most of the old Image Comics I had — I can understand buying one or two, but I followed some of these titles, like Wild C.A.T.s for much longer than I should’ve. Yes, I know I was pretty young at the time, but still, did I really have that much disposable income? Why can’t I have that much disposable income now?

I did like reading about the history of Valiant Comics, though, and it’s making me reconsider cutting some things up for craft projects …

(I also found a printout of the article I was interviewed for about the first incarnation of Comicsgirl when I was famous for about five seconds in Texas, but that really has nothing to do with anything.)

I really like The Plain Janes.

Is it the best graphic novel I’ve ever read? No, but it’s still good. It’s better than I expected (and I didn’t really expect it to be bad). Cecil Castellucci’s writing hits the right notes and Jim Rugg’s art helps to create a world that feels very immediate and familiar. The overall concept of a group of teenage girls working together to do something artistic is very inspiring (and on a local note, the story reminded me of the “Borf” saga in D.C., which still seems to be dividing people around here). I wouldn’t say this is high literature or anything, but it’s touching and something I can relate to all the same.

The whole “comics for girls” thing has been tried before to varying degrees of success, and plenty of complaints have floated around about Minx — from the name to the creative teams not featuring too many women — but DC figured it out. This is in no way condescending toward its target audience. DC understands that teenage girls are pretty savvy and smart and they’re treating them as such. I’m relieved.

This is just a good graphic novel, period. It’s a good graphic novel for teenage girls, sure, as it was intended to be, but mostly, it’s just good. This comic wouldn’t be out of place in the catalogues of Slave Labor Graphics or Oni Press. I mean that as praise.

I am very surprised by how this turned out. I hope the other Minx titles are as good.

(Maybe tomorrow or next week, I’ll write about Castle Waiting. I decided since The Plain Janes was new, I’d review it first.)

Everyone needs to pre-order the new Friends of Lulu anthology because it will be awesome. I love Broad Appeal (which I think is sadly out of print now) and I’m excited by the theme of this anthology. I’ve been waiting for it for a while.

(And not to be all-The-Beat-all-the-time, but Heidi MacDonald remains much smarter than me.)

Crafting website Cut Out + Keep‘s online zine, Snippets, features Comic Book Heroines in its latest issue. While it’s a pretty short, lightweight article and only deals with the more goth/indie side of comics, mentioning Dame Darcy and Serena Valentino, I was still delighted to see it.

And yes, I’m a sucker for anything about Tara McPherson. But you knew that already.

No, really, I saw it first! (Even if The Beat did post it before me.) After all, a major portion of my day is spent reading random stories from the Associated Press.

It covers most of the basics — you have Jonathan Lethem, Stephen King, Michael Chabon — but Jodi Picoult is in there, too (but no Tamara Pierce). I’m sure there’s some people I’m missing (comments at The Beat mention Douglas Rushkoff, but he’s not so much a novelist as just a writer).

It’s interesting to me — I mean, I suppose there’s a case that could be made about the legitimacy of comic books blah blah blah — but I also think that writers like to get paid and being under some kind of contract for a monthly title is a way to do it. I like that the AP is covering this, though, because to me, you don’t get much more mainstream than AP.