Strongly recommended
Review time! with Templar, Arizona volumes 1-4
Another webcomic? What am I, 20 years old? Sheesh.
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Review time! with The Art of War
I’ve already reviewed some of this, but now I get to review the whole thing!
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She Has No Head! – A Love Letter To Buffy
Many of you know that I’m a massive unabashed Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan. I rarely write about Buffy here, I’m not really sure why, but all that changes today. Why today you ask? Well, because Buffy impressed the hell out of me this week and it warrants discussion.
Artwork by Zugma
Review time! with Habibi
Man, this ain’t gonna be easy.
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She Has No Head! – Third Annual Awesome Women In Comics Holiday Gift List, 2011
Welcome back to my annual female positive comics holiday gift list!
So the holidays are (suddenly) upon us and you’ve decided that in these tough economic times you want to support the comic industry by giving everyone on your list sweet comics. And not only that, but you want to take it one step further and only give female positive comics…well, in that super specific case you’ve found the right list.
Like last year, in addition to picking excellent female positive titles, I also limited myself to books released in 2011 only. If you’re looking for more books that just those released in 2011, I urge you to check out my first list, which was not limited by a time period, and my second list, which covered books released in 2010.
Let’s get started, yes?
Review time! with Any Empire
Oh, Nate Powell. How you vex me!
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Review time! with The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury: Time Runs Out
Sci-fi adventuring! Yay!
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Review time! with Petrograd
Espionage in World War I Russia? I’m there!
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She Has No Head! – 8 Great (NEW) Female Positive Ongoings You Should Be Reading
People are always asking me for comic recommendations with good female portrayals. There are a lot of them of course, but I find when people ask for ongoing books, rather than collected trades, or stand alone graphic novels, or even limited series, it’s a bit harder to find as many as I’d like that fill that role. So I thought I’d spend some time pulling together a column talking about a few that I think are worth checking out as a nice “here read this!” when people ask me for recommendations. However, as I researched what I wanted to put on the list, it became obvious that we have surprising number of very new books that are looking pretty damn good. And so this list quickly morphed into “8 Great NEW Female Positive Ongoings”. The great thing about that is that all of the books on this list are very easy to jump onto now, as not one of them is currently beyond their third issue. The worrying thing about that is it’s hard to know with many of these how long they’ll be around. But if we all buy and support and talk about them, maybe we can help them become well established enough to be with us for a good long while?
This list skews pretty mainstream, which initially surprised me since I read a fair amount of independent work, and independent work on the whole tends to be more female positive to my mind, but in doing this list I realized that while it’s quite easy to find indie graphic novels, trades, and limited series that fit this criteria, ongoing are a bit of a different animal and when I limited my list to “new” it became an even smaller group. Still, only half the list is DC & Marvel, and at least two books are very independent, so I hope there’s a little something here for everyone. As always I welcome any good “female positive” (and new would be good!) recommendations of books I may have missed in the comments.
Review time! with Gingerbread Girl
More comics that you can read for free but which I elected to pay for! I’m just goofy that way!
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She Has No Head! – Life With Mr. Dangerous
Life With Mr. Dangerous. Paul Hornschemeier. Villard Press. 160 pages. Full Color. Hardcover. 
$22.00.
I’ve been reading delicious bits of Paul Hornschemeier’s Life With Mr. Dangerous for years now as they were published in MOME and I was delighted to see it finally collected beautifully all in one book.
Life With Mr. Dangerous is, in essence, a story about twenty-six year old Amy, a newly single girl (again) with a cat, who works in a mall clothing store somewhere in the Midwest, not unlike her divorced mother before her. Amy’s obsession with a cartoon program called Mr. Dangerous drives much of her life, too much, and she’s aware of this, though unable and perhaps unwilling to escape it as she’d like.
Review time! with Vietnamerica
A memoir! Everyone loves memoirs, right?
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She Has No Head! – Demo Volume 2
Demo Volume 2. Brian Wood (writer). Becky Cloonan (artist). Vertigo. 160 pages. Black & White, softcover. $17.99.
When Demo Volume 2 was coming out in single issues I wanted to write about every issue that came out, but something always got in the way, and eventually I had to resolve myself to just talking about the collected volume when it was finally released. And here we are! Finally!
Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s Demo Volume 2, a smart, beautiful, six-issue follow up to their 2003/2004 12-issue Demo Volume 1 series, is everything that was wonderful about Volume 1, plus the added time and experience that makes creators of Wood and Cloonan’s caliber even better. Wood and Cloonan’s work on this series is an excellent example of artistic evolution at work. Demo Volume 1 is a fantastic book, one that stands on its own as well today as it did when originally released, but it feels like the beautiful breakthrough freshman work, and Volume 2 feels like the more seasoned, thoughtful sophomore effort on both the writing and the art side.
She Has No Head! – Exclusive Preview of Ross Campbell’s Shadoweyes In Love (plus a contest!)
Shadoweyes In Love. Ross Campbell. SLG Publishing. 160 pages. Black & White, Softcover. $12.95
Thanks to Ross Campbell being an all around great guy, I’ve gotten an advance look at his new book, Shadoweyes In Love, forthcoming in April from SLG. Even better, Campbell has given She Has No Head! an exclusive 10-page preview as well as a peek at some never before seen Shadoweyes artwork. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve got a contest and some awesome prizes including a book and some original artwork. Read on for details!
I’ve been anxiously awaiting Ross Campbell’s second volume of Shadoweyes because I loved the first and couldn’t wait to see where he was going to go with his YA superhero tale which was nominated for a Glyph award, listed on CBR’s top 100 Comics of 2010, and made YALSA’s 2011 Great Graphic Novels For Teens list. Shadoweyes volume 1 didn’t shy away from asking tough questions that modern superhero stories generally avoid, and I was excited to see if Campbell’s second volume could push those questions even further. I was not disappointed.
She Has No Head! – Advance Review Of The New York Five #1
The New York Five. Brian Wood (writer). Ryan Kelly (art). Vertigo. 32 pages. Black & White. $2.99.
This book has absolutely everything I like.
Seriously.
It’s got great well fleshed out characters, strong (but complex and not always perfect) female leads. It’s got fantastic art that really places characters in a believable setting (in this case the always fabulous New York City). It’s got attention to to everything from the characters favorite songs to their clothing choices (which are phenomenal and fitting for their personalities) and it’s just funny and smart and totally fun.
I suppose I could just end the review there, but let’s not…
So The New York Five is a sequel of sorts to Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly’s The New York Four which was released as a 150 page digest via DC’s Minx imprint in 2008. And if you want to know more about how all of that happened – and read a great interview with two of the best comics creators today – head over to yesterday’s She Has No Head! for more. You’ll probably enjoy The New York Five even more if you have already read The New York Four, but it’s not a requirement. Wood brings readers up to speed nicely with a clever opening that quickly outlines what has happened so far and who our major players are. If you read the opening and pay attention you can pick up this Vertigo mini-series easily without having read the previous book and still get massive enjoyment from it – that said – if you like this, you should seek out The New York Four anyway, as you’re likely to enjoy it as well.
