The other day, I was browsing through Comixology, and I came across the Harlequin/SB Creative page (I believe most are also available on the Kindle, though, and possibly elsewhere — this is just where I found them). Not only had the whole Harlequin manga thing not disappeared, there are nearly 450 titles. (Most seem to be both be written and drawn by women.)

A quick crowdsourced query offered some suggestions of ones to read. So of course I bought some and did just that.

Domesticating Luc, written by Sandra Paul, art by Mayu Takayama

This was probably the most straightforward and the sweetest of the three I read. It’s about a playboy, Luc, who is trying to train his late grandmother’s dog so he can put it up for adoption. His dog trainer, Julie, ends up staying with him to do just that (like you do).

It’s fun and silly (the dog, an Italian mastiff named Puppy, even has some asides). I didn’t find Luc to be particularly attractive — little too stiff and square-jawed for me — but Takayama’s Julie is bright-eyed and adorable. It’s the least sexually-explicit of the three I read — while Julie and Luc clearly has sex, it’s all hazy and dreamy with no nudity.

I didn’t quite buy the romance between them — it’s all pretty obvious and tame — but it was cute.

The Passionate Sinner, written by Violet Winspear, art by Yoko Hanabusa

This is when things start to go off the deep end, which I am guessing is the ultimate appeal of these. I mean that in a good way. A surgeon named Paul Von Setan is blinded and the nurse who took the blame, Merlin, pretends to be an old woman to become Paul’s secretary as he works on a book on a tropical island.

Following all of that? Of course, Merlin is found out and Paul suspects she was the nurse who intentionally blinded him. There’s a bunch of gothic silliness here in the classic sense (think … Jane Eyre, but maybe in reverse and maybe with a loss of a limb).

The relationship seems primarily passionate and physical at first, and Paul definitely has a weird, controlling streak. There is a bit more nudity here and the sex scenes — while still hazy — definitely feel more physical and present. Hanabusa’s art has a pleasing retro quality to it, which I enjoyed. Her panel layouts are also dynamic and appealing.

This kind of falls into the “I don’t know if I’d call it good” category for me, but it was fun and I enjoyed I had no idea where it was going next (even if it ended up in an expected place).

The Sheik and the Virgin Secretary, written by Susan Mallery and art Kakuko Shinozaki

When I asked for recommendations, someone said “anything with Sheik in the title” and OK, let’s ignore the ethnic implications and just go with that. I picked this one because that title made it seem like it was going to be ridiculous.

I was kind of right. It wasn’t as over-the-top as I expected, but I think that made it better.

The virgin secretary of the title, Kiley, asks her boss, Rafiq (you guessed it! The sheik of the title. He’s from a fictional country in the Middle East so that fixes everything!) if she can be his mistress. You see, Kiley
just caught her fiancé cheating on her and clearly this is a logical solution to that. They agree to do this for three months.

I admire how quickly the plot just jumps to this (this arrangement happens in the first three pages). However, after Kiley admits to Rafiq she’s a virgin, he says he’s going to take it slowly — in a good way, of course. Yes, they fall in love because of course they do, but their relationship seems to have a natural progression. While there is conflict and family drama, it’s all pretty quickly resolved. I liked that.

Of the three I read, this definitely had the most sex — lots of undressing, fondling early on and it quickly progresses to more as the book continues. There’s quite a bit of nudity as well (all female, though). The sex scenes are pretty extended and while they still leave enough to the imagination, I was surprised at what they didn’t.

Shinozaki’s art is loose and modern and I thought it suited this story well. Kiley isn’t presented as a great beauty, but that’s definitely one of the points of the story. Rafiq is playfully handsome. Her page layouts have a breeziness to them that makes this story fun. For all the expected beats, the art really carries the story.

—

I have to admit I was surprised by the overall quality of these — I definitely went into this with some curiosity but not overly high expectations. The writing, while it adheres to pretty standard romance novel tropes and beats, is strong and effective. The manga artists are a good match for each title. These feel like they weren’t treated as a throwaway — the quality is much, much better than it needs to be. I love that.

While I could see how easily these could be addicting — they’re certainly entertaining and fun — at about $6 per title, they’re a little pricey for things I’m unlikely to ever read again. However, I like to know they’re there and whenever I need some silly comfort, I can imagine myself buying a couple more every now and then. I have a couple more recommendations to read but I’ll gladly take more.

Best friends Amber, Tiffany, Michelle and Courtney perform as princesses at their local theme park, The Enchanted Park (which has seen better days) and are looking forward to their futures. However, as obstacles keep them from their perceived dreams, our heroines in Monica Gallagher‘s Part-Time Princesses (Oni Press, 2015), realize they can use their strengths and abilities to save their park from those who want to destroy it.

It’s refreshing to read a comic about teenage girls that’s not focused on them being misfits. Although our heroines are popular, they’re more Clueless than Mean Girls — they can be a bit self-involved but they’re well-meaning and each has her own motivations and interests, from the ambitious, smart Michelle to the dramatic Tiffany

Gallagher has a wonderful eye for fashion and the way teen girls actually interact. Each girl looks unique — down to her body type and style (Courtney is athletic and sporty, wannabe model Amber is tall and graceful). While Gallagher’s backgrounds are sparse, they focus the attention on her strong ability to convey personality and emotions through body language and facial expressions. The girls not only feel like friends to each other — they feel like girls you know.

While the story mostly proceeds with the expected beats as each girl finds her true abilities, there are a few curves — an unexpected romance, a hidden conspiracy — that keep the plot from feeling too obvious. Gallagher’s gift for the playful rhythms of life keep her storytelling strong and fresh.

As much as I love comics about girls and women in extraordinary circumstances (whether it’s real life or fantastic), it’s refreshing to read a graphic novel that’s about normal girls doing mostly normal things. I would love to see more comics like Part-Time Princesses in the world.

Digital review copy provided by Oni Press.

Jamie Coe‘s Art Schooled (2014, Nobrow Press), focuses on this exact time through the eyes of Daniel, a young man from a small English town who goes to (you guess it!) art school in the big city. While it sometimes indulges in the expected navel-gazing young man stereotypes, Coe’s look at the ups and downs of the artist life is both sweet and satirical. While it’s not necessarily going to defy your expectations, there are surprises to be had here.

Our protagonist Daniel is a shy and awkward but completely normal young man. He comes into conflict with his roommates, embarrasses himself and quickly comes to realize art school is full of ridiculous people — both students and teachers alike. The book is told mostly through anecdotes — small vignettes about the creepy male model who poses for classes, visiting art galleries, the pretensions of other students.

The book is full of asides — Daniel offers up detailed portraits of the types of art students you’ll find, “person on the street” features where students answer questions such as “What’s the worst thing about art school?” for examples — and they give depth to the slightly generic plot (Daniel goes to art school! He meets a girl! He has self-doubt! He then finds his voice as an artist!). It was a wise choice on the part of Coe, letting Daniel’s inner life shine through in a playful way.

While Coe’s art does invoke a lot of the previous generation of indie-comics masters (you know who I’m talking about), he does shine with his ability to capture personalities through fashion and body language. His faces have a life of their own, revealing raw emotions clearly.

But the most striking part of Art Schooled is Coe’s inspired use of color and layout mark him as a distinctive talent. Greens compliment times when Daniel is smoking pot with his roommates, orange haze brings to mind the late-night glow of city streets. Tiny, multiple panels push fast-moving conversations and wide, page-filling images give space to smaller, quieter moments. Coe definitely understands the emotional language of comics.

As his first full-length graphic novel, Art Schooled announces Jamie Coe as an exciting talent. This book is fun. It will be even more fun to see what he does next.

(Coe will be Short Run in Seattle this weekend. I won’t be since I’m on the wrong side of the country and no one is paying to fly me out there.)

Review copy provided by publisher.

Briefly noted:

• REM Pt. 1 by M.R. Trower — REM begins M.R. Trower’s dystopian sci-fi epic (I assume it’s going to be an epic, anyway). It’s one part Moebius, one part punk rock. Trower’s art is surreal and sensitive and the world feels fully developed. (You can catch up online but I just like print.)
• Magical Beatdown Vo1. 1 & Vol. 1.5 by Jenn Woodall — Woodall takes the magical girl genre to its inevitable conclusion — super violence! — and the outcome could not be more delightful. Purposefully ridiculous and over-the-top, the swearing and the gore actually comes across as charming, and Woodall’s pastiche of manga tropes is fun. The two color printing (blue and hot pink) add nicely to the effect. I love this more than I should.
• The Art of Cooking with Michelle, Chloe and Mia by Liz Brizzi — Liz Brizzi pointed me to her Kickstarter for her comic cook book. It looks super cute and I’m a huge fan of comics about food/recipe comics. There is about two weeks to go and she still needs about $5,000. She has a good selection of reasonably-priced rewards.

Skandalon focuses on a French rock star who goes by the name of Tazane. He’s talented, gorgeous and moody. He’s also a predator (sexual and otherwise) because he can be. He’s not a particularly likable lead, but he’s one that’s interesting to watch. Readers first meet him when he’s already famous so we don’t see where he came from (although there’s hints about it). Instead, we’re just witnesses to his fall.

While it’s highly allegorical, Maroh does her best to make it feel personal. While it’s hard to feel connected to Tazane himself, her use of color — dark reads, washed out greens, warm pinks, deep blues — to set tone and pace creates a beautiful, sensitive tone. Her panels look like individual paintings and give the story a dreamy quality. For a book about a rock star, there is an astonishing amount of silence in her art. Word balloons often feel like an intrusion as Maroh communicates her story through images alone. Her gift for taking the explicit expressiveness of manga and transforming it into her own style has only gotten stronger. If nothing else, Skandalon is an amazing book visually.

Unfortunately, the story falls short of where it should be. I admire what Maroh was reaching for and while I certainly don’t need to like the main character to enjoy a story, Tazane never quite grasped my empathy. Intellectually, I knew what Maroh was trying say, but I didn’t feel much about anything that happened to anyway toward the end. I missed the visceral, emotional core that Blue is the Warmest Color had. The story was more ambitious but obviously less personal for Maroh, and that shows.

Still, I’d rather see someone reach and fail than not reach at all. I admire that Maroh tried to explore these topics and she’s still a masterful artist. Even if I feel a bit mixed in the end on Skandalon, it still joins the company of books I will continue to think about and revisit. In that way, it’s nothing but a success.

Except this year, it’s only a good thing. The Best American Comics 2014 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) is a masterful collection of where the medium of comics is right now. If you need a primer, this is it. If you just want to have all these amazing comics in one volume you can take with you, this is it. This has set the standard for what all the following The Best American Comics books need to be.

Under the guidance of new series editor Bill Kartalopoulos (who, among many other things he does, always puts together incredible programming for Small Press Expo), it does feel like the direction of what these books should be has changed. While I have no problem with what former series editors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel were doing, Kartalopoulos brings a curator’s eye to this collection, seeking out the new and the different, and wanting to highlight new creators alongside the legends. It all goes into a wonderful pool to choose from.

This year’s editor is Scott McCloud, and his background as a comics creator, teacher and thinker shows through. He is obviously excited about comics all the time and his enthusiasm shows through. He organizes the comics here into categories and provides context for each section. It gives the volume a structure and flow that has been lacking in previous ones. Even as much as I know about comics (and many of these creators), I found this to be insightful and informative.

Yes, you’ll still find most of the usual suspects here — the book starts selections from Jaime Hernandez, Charles Burns, Adrian Tomine and R. Crumb — but that’s dispensed with quickly (and wisely). Other than an extended look at Chris Ware’s Building Stories, the rest of the collection is full more recent legends and unknown creators — from Raina Telgmeier (it’s a delight to see Drama highlighted here) to Michael DeForge to Sam Alden (whose gorgeous Hawaii 1997 is included here).

Even crossover favorites like Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staple’s Saga and Brandon Graham’s Multiple Warheads get nods here. Instead of coming across as “I too like popular comics” on the part of McCloud, it feels more like “These are really great comics and I wanted to share them!”

Did anything surprise me here? I certainly loved that Allie Brosh’s “Depression Part II” is put with all these great comics because it deserves to be there. It’s fun to see an excerpt from Lale Westvind’s Hyperspeed to Nowhere #2 and selections from Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac in this book, too. I appreciate that McCloud didn’t shy away from including more experimental comics from Aidan Koch and Erin Curry.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve read most or none of these comics before. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to discover new creators or just want to enjoy some old favorites. Whether you know nothing about comics or that’s all you read, The Best American Comics 2014 is for you.

Review copy provided by publisher.

Briefly noted:

I’m still going through my stack of comics from Small Press Expo (and the comics I bought afterward), but I just wanted to highlight a few I’ve read lately and have enjoyed.

• Weird Me Vol. 1 by Kelly Phillips – Phillips tells her tale of her days managing a Weird Al fansite. It’s hilarious and sweet. Her art carries a good sense of setting and emotion and her page layouts are dynamic. I am looking forward to Vol. 2 way too much (in fact, after finishing this, I immediately went online to ask when it was going to be done.)
• The Secret of Angel Food Cake by Hannah Lee Stockdale – I have read this comic way too many times and after I failed to see her at SPX, she kindly sent me the print version. There is just something so lovely and quiet about the storytelling. And I like the way Stockdale draws dogs. If you draw good dogs, I like your comics.
• Hair by Matt Lubchansky – This minicomic is basically just a punchline you can guess from the beginning, but it’s still a good one. Lubchansky’s comic is funny and playful — characters are all wide-eyes and exaggerated movements — and things that could be horrifying just come across as silly. Also, great use of spot color.

So what happens when you know early on you don’t fit into that?

Liz Prince reflects on growing up as a girl who always identified more with the boys in her sweetly hilarious graphic memoir Tomboy (Zest Books, 2014), taking down gender norms along the way and making her own, more interesting path.

It’s not necessarily a rare story: as a child, Prince shunned dresses and preferred The Real Ghostbusters to playing dress-up. But this caused problems on both sides — elementary school boys rejected girls on principle and Prince didn’t really relate to too many of the girls.

Along the way, Prince makes some friends (boys and girls!), joins Little League and Girl Scouts (she has range!), develops crushes on boys and has her heart-broken a few times. But through some kind and caring girls and women, Prince discovers zines and punk rock.

The book’s pace is episodic and heavy on playful anecdotes and asides about society and growing up, often addressing the reader directly. There are a few darker moments that deal with bullies and cruel friends, but the tone is light overall. Prince has an incredible ability to find honesty and humor in her own life and it shines through in the stories she’s telling.

Her loose, casual art has an airiness to it, like a cool friend telling a funny story in an effortless way. As deceptively simple as her style is, Prince is a master at conveying emotion, movement and places with a few lines. This book is full of life as she jumps from cartoonish sequences to silent, personal moments.

One of the most touching parts of Tomboy comes toward the end, where Prince reads Ariel Schrag’s Definition and says “For the first time I saw myself reflected in a book.” I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to imagine this book doing the same thing for some other girl. This may be Liz Prince’s specific story, but it’s one many of us can see ourselves in.

Copy of Tomboy provided by the publisher.

They kindly said yes. I was delighted. It’s truly better than anything I would write about it and Molly even made a video!

Raina Telgemeier’s new book, Sisters, is truly extraordinary, great and awesome. It tells the reader another story from Raina’s past. Raina always wanted a sister, but when she finally got her wish it was not as nice as she thought it would be. Raina and her sister, Amara, were very different and liked different things, which made things difficult between them at some points. Raina had wanted someone to play with, while Amara was the kind of girl who wanted to play by herself a lot. But they both loved drawing. Most of the story is about the family’s road trip and has several flashbacks.

The story kinda reminds me of me and my brothers. One of brothers and I do not get along that well and fight a lot (like Raina and Amara). One of my other brothers thinks that I steal the spotlight all the time, just like Amara accuses Raina. My brothers say things sometimes to get on my nerves, so reading this book kind of reminded me of me and them.

If you read Raina Telgemeier’s new book, you are going to love it. At the end you might still have some questions left about this or that, but you will still love it. I am a fan myself so you can trust me, Molly.

Buy Raina Telgemeier’s new book, Sisters! Coming soon.

Molly, 11, lives in Virginia with her brothers and parents. She likes to draw and make comics.

But there is an underlying current of danger for so many women. Is this street safe? Should I ride in the elevator with this man or wait for the next one? Is this person my friend or just waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of me?

Nevermind that women live in bodies that are often confusing. We ache, we hurt, we feel emotions we don’t always understand. We bleed and want. But women just live with these things for the most part. I know I don’t give them too much thought. It’s just part of my daily life.

I thought about these things while reading the gorgeous collection of Emily Carroll’s stories, Through the Woods (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2014). It’s not that all of these stories are about these specific issues, but even in the more horrific stories, there’s an undercurrent of this just being what life is like.

The five stories here (plus an introduction and a conclusion) take us deep into the world Carroll has created. It’s one part Shirley Jackson, one part Grimm’s fairy tales, one part Junji Ito, but so much more. Part of Carroll’s gift is how she transforms her influences into something completely new. In Carroll’s world, everywhere is haunted; everything means you harm.

Much of Carroll’s power is in what goes unseen. In the first story, “Our Neighbor’s House,” the protagonist narrates her sisters seeing a mysterious stranger before they each disappear, leaving her alone to face what’s to come. There’s no overt horror in this tale, but the tension is in the waiting, in the inevitable fate of our narrator. Carroll does creeping dread like no one else working in comics.

But when Carroll wants to show us actual horror, she’s unafraid, and her visions are as beautiful as they are terrifying.

In the elegantly paced “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold,” her twisting page layouts, poetic language and art saturated with bright blues and crimson reds lead the reader down a frightening path that turns in unexpected places. In the book’s final story, “The Nesting Place,” the quiet distress builds to outright horror. While Mabel’s distrust of her brother’s fiancée never feels out of place, the reveal feels both shocking and earned.

Carroll never feels like she’s pushing her metaphors about women’s bodies and lives being in control of forces outside themselves. The subtly of how she conveys her themes is skillful and lovely. Bottom line, these are all just wonderfully scary horror stories. That there is some subtext just feels like a bonus.

If you’ve read Carroll’s work online, you know she enjoys playing with form and format. Her layout switch wildly to suit her stories — unconstrained and open one moment, quiet and formal the next. Her unique style seems to be influenced by everything — children’s books illustrations, manga, indie and European comics, animation, video game artwork — but she filters it into a singular vision. It feels hauntingly familiar but also foreign, much like a nightmare.

The design of Through the Woods is also incredible. The full-bleed pages are engrossing and the glossy paper shows off the pure black and rich, vivid colors. It translates the power of Carroll’s online work into book format perfectly.

Emily Carroll is a comics creator people are going to study generations from now. She’s that good. Through the Woods is a masterpiece collection of comics. And I hope it’s only the first one of many.

Copy of Through the Woods provided by Big Planet Comics. Carroll is also one of Small Press Expo‘s special guests, so come tell her how awesome she is Sept. 13-14.

Likewise, Glasgow-based Team Girl Comic has grown and changed from its early days into a group that can absolutely not be ignored. If you haven’t been paying attention to Team Girl Comic, Issue #10 is the perfect place to start.

As explained in the opening story by Claire Yvette and Gill Hatcher, in Team Girl Comic #10, Hatcher didn’t feel like her comics were quite fitting in to the scene she saw around Glasgow in 2009. In an effort to find a community, she began seeking out other girls and women making comics. They began publishing anthologies and holding events, but the companionship and camaraderie they found in each other was the most important.

The diversity of styles and subjects is delightful. MJ Wallace‘s sweetly thoughtful “How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Me” illustrates how she made peace with her body image in touching detail, even including some sketches from her life drawing classes. Shona Heaney‘s “The Winston Churchill Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” delivers on the title’s promise in both hilarious and disturbing ways in bleak, scratchy pen drawings.

There’s diversions into the fantastic, like “GEMS Saltire Squad” by Amanda “Hateball” Stewart, and into the surreal, like Donya Todd‘s “HC.” Many of the stories, though, do deal with what life is like for the modern woman, like Iona “Nondo” Mowat’s all-to-real “Small Talk Frustrations” and Lucy Sweet‘s charming reflection on getting older, “What Will I Be Doing When I’m Forty?”

The centerpiece of Team Girl Comic #10 is, without a doubt, “The Extraordinary Occurrence That Took Place at Comicon, in July 2013” written by the legendary Trina Robbins and illustrated by Hatcher. Robbins writes about how, last year, other than the predictable outcome of a bunch of men winning in the Eisner awards, a surprising number of women won. Hatcher draws the reactions — disappointment and boredom to men winning and happiness and surprise to women winning — in a playful way. What is a simple anecdote becomes an entertaining glimpse into how comics is constantly changing for the better.

By bringing together women creators of all ages and experience, Team Girl Comic #10 definitely feels like the party that’s illustrated on the cover. It’s one where you have friends and you’ll make new ones. Everyone is welcome and everyone is going to have fun.

And I know I’m looking forward to the day when I’m reading Team Girl Comic #20.

PDF provided for review by Team Girl Comic.

And that’s exactly why Luke Pearson‘s Hildafolk series is a delight. In Hilda’s world, magical creatures are commonplace, to the point of being mundane (did you dog have antlers like Hilda’s pet, Twig?). The charm of these books are effortless and joyful.

As Hilda and the Black Hound (Flying Eye Books/Nobrow, 2014) begins, Hilda’s mother decides it’s time she makes some friends in Trolberg and signs her up for the Sparrow Scouts. Meanwhile, the house spirits known as Nisses are being banished from their homes while the big black hound of the title is being spotted all over the city of Trolberg.

Hilda is an infinitely sweet heroine, and her desire for knowledge always leads her to want to help. She wants to give something to the Nisse Tontu when she first spots him, despite her mother’s insistence to leave him alone because Nisse are only kicked out of their houses when they do something bad (“But wouldn’t it still be a good thing?” she pleads, regardless). Her belief in the goodness of people (and creatures!) does often lead her into trouble, it’s what gives her strength and makes her someone to root for.

Pearson’s art has a playful softness to it. Hilda’s huge, round eyes reveal her constant curiosity and the Nisses are all big noses and beards. The color palette is usually muted primaries with a few twists of brighter purples and darker shadows and the backgrounds offer enough detail to make the world feel lived in without taking away from the deceptive simplicity of the character design.

Pearson shines in action scenes, which are often wordless. He lets panels flow into the next, moving the readers’ eyes along at a quick pace, making the book feel more like watching an animated cartoon. These parts of the book are often quite funny and since Hilda is rarely afraid, neither are the readers.

Pearson also packs in plenty of plot into the slight page count, but the story never feels overburdened, even with a few playful surprise thrown in. He balances Hilda’s real-world concerns (living up to her mother’s expectations as a Sparrow Scout) with her more magical concerns in a quiet, understated way. Hilda is ultimately just trying to do good and make those around her happy.

These are gorgeous books and Flying Eye, like Nobrow before it, continues to be a publisher to watch. The Hildafolk books all feel like they’re children’s books for the ages as soon as you read them and Hilda and the Black Hound is a beautiful addition to the series. My only complaint is that it’s probably another year until the next one, but I know it will be worth the wait.

Copy of Hilda and the Black Hound provided by the publisher.