So if you came across this site, you may be interested in what I’m doing now. It’s a project I’m calling The Revision and it’s a deep dive into movies based on comics that focus on women or girls. And here’s the twist: None of these are about superheroes.

The introduction post has some more information. The first post is about two of the Blondie movies. It will run weekly on Tuesdays.

There will be extra content (more movies, TV shows and things that didn’t fit into the main scope) on my Patreon.

I hope you join me in this journey. We’re going to have fun.

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.

It’s 1982 in Sweden and everyone keeps telling Bobo that “punk is dead.” Bobo knows different. Punk isn’t a genre of music. It’s a feeling you have in your heart.

Lucas Moodysson’s We Are the Best!, based on his wife’s, Coco Moodysson, semi-autobiographical comic, Never Goodnight, is the punk-rock movie you didn’t know you wanted but absolutely needed. It’s one of the few movies that gives absolutely respect to the inner life of girls. There is nothing here that makes fun of them. They are treated as the absolute forces of nature that they are.

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.

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.

Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s discussion of their new graphic novel, This One Summer (First Second/Groundwood Books, 2014) at Politics and Prose on May 17 was introduced by what seemed like an unlikely choice: A young man named Frans. In his metal T-shirt and camouflage pants with long hair and a beard, he didn’t seem like someone who would be too into a young adult graphic novel about two girls created by two women. But that was the point: Frans told us that while he came into comics through ’90s titles like Cyberforce, he found a lot to connect with in This One Summer.

If that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is.

For about an hour, the Tamaki cousins discussed their book and their work overall in an intimate chat, taking questions from the audience of a few dozen. The two had a playful, easy chemistry with each other, which showed why they are such effortless collaborators.

Many questions focused on their creative process. Mariko said she gives Jillian a script that’s written in a play format, but mostly trusts what Jillian will do with it. And the idea of “trust” was a big theme in how they work with each other. Jillian said she felt entitled to ignore some of Mariko’s dialogue and direction, and Mariko was OK with that, saying that most of those things were for her own understanding.

As opposed to their first collaborative graphic novel, Skim, this story was more complicated so there was more back and forth and more editing (and many Skype conversations). Both spoke of the strengths comics as an artform has — Mariko said that part of writing comics is writing very sparsely and letting the visual elements do much of the work.

Many people had questions about the editing process for this book and comics in general. The Tamakis did a lot of their own editing, but they did work with their publishers. They both said they were fortunate to have publishers who understand what they’re doing and because they did Skim, both publishers knew what sort of subject matter to expect.

That led to a question if they were ever forced to make changes. Mariko said they never felt forced to make any changes and Jillian said she didn’t know why anyone would be surprised by what they were creating. Mariko said that the things that define “young adult” literature have changed and Jillian added most kids aren’t going to pick up a book unless it has edgier elements in it.

When asked about writing about female protagonists, Jillian shrugged it off. She said she only wants to make books she wants to read and she doesn’t understand the trends. She’s more interested in realism and didn’t think, at the time, that Skim was really a YA book. Mariko commented that the subtitled on the mini-comic version of Skim was “This is the diary of Skim Takota. So fuck off” and she wasn’t interested in writing to market. She said she can’t write a dystopian adventure story and her characters would be “the first two characters to be killed off in the Hunger Games.“

Both talked about the hard realities of doing what they do. As much as Jillian loves making comics, it’s subsidized by the other things she does — teaching, illustration work and more. Because of that, she said “I should just make the comics I want to make.” Mariko laughed about having to teach a class about working as a writer and said it should’ve been a class on “Working four jobs.” But both felt their other jobs is what gives them material and depth and keeps them motivated. Jillian said she creates comics for comics audiences primarily, since they’re the ones who know the medium. If others like it, then that’s just a bonus.

They joked about the differences between U.S. and Canadian literature — mostly that Canada isn’t into that whole “hero” thing but instead, just surviving, and they liked that Canadian literature is full of “cranky, frustrated women.”

When asked about how she’s able to convey such subtle emotions, Jillian offered this advice: “If you want to learn how to draw, make a comic.” She’s someone who’s still learning and growing as an artist, despite her years of experience. Mariko offered her praise, saying that in anyone else’s hands, the moments Jillian draws would be melodramatic.

As a perfect summary to the talk, as the two discussed their expectations for This One Summer going forward, Mariko said simply “What I wanted this book to be, it already is.”

But if the reaction from everyone — including Frans — is any indication, it’s going to be much more than that.

(Also on Saturday was the Gaitherburg Book Festival. I have a few photos and few thought on Tumblr.)

But my one thought after reading it was “That could’ve been a Minx book.”

An imprint of DC, Minx launched in 2007 and was dead by 2008, but there were problems as soon as it was announced. The name Minx never bugged me — it was cute and just salacious enough — but the lack of female creators was an issue. Minx had too much to prove and had to do it too quickly.

But Minx ultimately faced a bigger problem than just skepticism: The books just weren’t very good.

The majority of the 12 titles follow this extremely set format: An introspective, outcast teenage girl flirts with danger and boys before learning some very important life lesson, delivered with some moralistic overtones. They play a bit too safely, shying away from any real issues. For a moment in Confessions of a Blabbermouth, there was an implication of possible sexual abuse before it was quickly resolved into a “twist” that had been obviously almost from the beginning. Emiko Superstar isn’t the worst of the bunch, but when compared to the devastating and beautiful Skim, also written by Mariko Tamaki, it feels obvious the Minx editors didn’t trust their audience’s ability to handle anything that could be perceived as “dark.”

If this was just one or two of the titles, it could be forgiven. But when faced with about seven titles that all share what is more or less the same character and the same plot dressed up in different ways, it begins to feel a bit paternalistic and tiresome.

Not every one is like this, though. Ross Campbell‘s Water Baby is refreshingly crude and physical and has teenagers that actually act and talk like teenagers. The New York Four, by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, has its issues, but at least felt like something teenage girls would want to read. I don’t know where Aaron Alexovich‘s Kimmie66 was originally pitched to, but with its twisty sci-fi story about identity, it’s definitely the oddball of the bunch (and is perhaps the most interesting because of it).

But I think beyond issue of repetitive plot structure, what bothered me the most about the Minx books is that they’re all basically a waste of good talent.

The editors had a good eye at hiring creators who appealed to young women but then buried the exact things that made them appealing to that audience.

Jim Rugg is a phenomenal artist, and while his work on both of the Plain Janes books is attractive enough, it lacks the kinetic, playful energy of his Street Angel. Both Andi Watson and Derek Kirk Kim are poetic, thoughtful writers, but Clubbing and Good As Lily suffer from the lack of their art. For the most part, there’s very little chemistry between the writers and the artists. These books feel like work for hire and it shows.

Still, there’s a part of me that admires Minx not for what it ended up as, but for what it wanted to be. Minx was definitely an attempt to capture the young female readers of manga, but I think it provided a point of transition for publishers to realize this was an audience worth catering to. I can’t think of too many graphic novels aimed specifically at teenage girls before Minx. I can think of way too many that have come out since then.

I don’t think it’s quite right to say that Minx opened the door for those graphic novels. But, at the very least, I think Minx deserves some credit for making publishers realize that there was a door worth opening.

Near Miss is a semi-regular feature that will be appearing on Comicsgirl throughout 2013-2014. This project is sponsored by Big Planet Comics.

All of those things made me less and less interested in the movie. After reading the graphic novel, I lost all desire to do so. Touching, beautiful with just the right amount of melodrama, I want nothing to take away from the experience I had reading Blue is the Warmest Color.

Framed by Emma traveling to Clementine’s parents’ house after Clementine’s funeral, most of the book is told through Clementine’s teenage diaries — her first encounters with boys, her relationships with friends and her first chance meeting with the blue-haired Emma.

What begins as general intrigue soon turns into something more. For the tentative, unsure Clementine, the artistic and bold Emma represents something she could become. The friendship is sweet and beautiful initially and when it bursts into romantic passion, it feels absolutely perfect.

Later complications with friends and family tend hit the expected plot points, but Maroh lets the drama happen organically. Her story is not meant to speak of the experiences of all young lesbians in France; it’s just meant to be about these two women and their lives. While the final melodrama of Clementine’s death feels a little like Maroh wasn’t sure where else to go with her story, there is a sweetness and poignancy to it. After all, these women were so tied together, what else could actually separate them other than death?

Maroh’s art follows in the tradition of a lot of French comics, but her round faces and big, overly expressive eyes point to an obvious manga influence. While the book is narration and dialogue heavy, her characters’ body language and posture tell more of the story. Her characters are very physical on the page and she uses silence well. When Clementine’s parents chase her and Emma out of their house upon discovering the relationship, it’s done in frenzied, dialogue-free pages. Knowing what was said who minimized the impact and shows how quickly it all happened.

And yes, there’s sex in this book and Maroh is not shy about presenting it. It’s not for titillation, though, or even eroticism. The sex is gorgeous and moving and communicates the intimacy of Clementine and Emma like nothing else could.

Maroh also uses color masterfully. Pages in flashback are washed-out sepias, with pops of blue (usually Emma’s hair) as the only color. More modern scenes are in color, but are muted in tone. Throughout, blue is the color that is the most predominant. While that could come across as being obvious, it neatly ties the past to the present and creates a consistent emotion throughout.

In Blue in the Warmest Color, Julie Maroh has created an intimate portrait of two intertwined lives. It’s thoughtful and it’s heartfelt and I love the time I got to spend with Emma and Clementine. Those are the images and experiences I want to keep with me. You can go see the movie if you want, but trust me when I say I already know the book is better.

(My friend Steve reviewed the movie at his blog, Unseen Films, today. He didn’t like it much.)

Earlier this week, College Humor posted a fake trailer for a live-action Daria movie, starring Aubrey Plaza as the title character. As someone who has been watching Daria episodes lately (as well as a lot of Parks & Recreation — hey, Netflix, where’s last season? I’m waiting …), I found it completely charming. And there was a big part of me that wanted it to be real.

So I’m sure being a teenage girl is strange at any time. It’s not something that ever gets easier, after all. But I’d say being a teenage girl in the ‘90s was a fairly unique experience. Unlike a lot of times, we were offered a pretty broad range of role models. While Daria came later than I thought, it was a still a decade that started with Riot Grrrls and My So-Called Life and ended with Spice Girls and Britney Spears.

The ‘90s were also an interesting (both in the “good” and “bad” senses of the word) time for comics, and definitely saw growth from more “adult” lines like DC Comics’ Vertigo, which published both Kill Your Boyfriend and Death: The High Cost of Living.

I imagine some of you may think that 1995’s Kill Your Boyfriend wasn’t aimed at teenage girls. And maybe it wasn’t on purpose, but Grant Morrison’s and Philip Bond’s drug-, sex-, and violence-filled romp speaks more about being a teenage girl than you realize.

Our unnamed schoolgirl protagonist is basically your typical frustrated everygirl — she’s dissatisfied with the role she’s handed in life. She’s smart but undervalued. She has a dumb boyfriend that she has just because that’s what’s expected. Her parents belittled her and accuse her of having sex when she’s not. No one listens to her, no one respects her.

Is it any wonder she’d want to act out? Is it really any wonder why she’d want to break out?

I think it’s really left up to the reader to decide if everything that happens after she encounters a charismatic drifter in a fast food restaurant is real or fantasy. I don’t think it matters. As they indulge in a prolonged spree of murder, substance abuse and anarchy, our heroine gets to see the side of life she’s always been missing — one that allows who to be whoever she chooses to be, to try on new roles. She can be unabashedly sexual, dangerous and bold.

Morrison’s writing and Bond’s art are surprisingly playful and counteract the many dark elements of this tale. It’s a romp from beginning to end and it’s meant to be.  The final page is a little bleak, but I think mostly, Morrison and Bond are telling young women to choose a different fate — that there’s more than one path open to them.

While there’s definitely a lot of this that declares itself to be a mid-90s book from Vertigo, it doesn’t  feel dated. Some of the references and aesthetic firmly place it in its time, but there’s a freshness to the voice that I think could feel relevant to a lot of young women now.

While many women did and do love The Sandman, the Death books always seemed to be marketed toward a slightly different (and younger) audience. Tori Amos wrote the introduction to 1994’s Death: The High Cost of Living (let us not dismiss the huge impact Amos had on many of us as teenagers in the ‘90s); and the introduction to the later Death: The Time of Your Life was written by Claire Danes. Even the newer The Absolute Death collection had its introduction written by Gaiman’s wife, Amanda Palmer. For good or bad, Death’s stories are aimed toward women.

Despite her name being in the title, Death: The High Cost of Living isn’t actually that much about Death herself. It’s about a depressed/superficially suicidal teenage boy named Sexton. Written by (of course) Neil Gaiman with perky, manga-inflected art by Chris Bachalo, Sexton is presented as approachable and cute in a Kurt Cobain kind of way (it was the ‘90s!) and after his meeting with the sweet, gothy Didi (in a landfill of all places!) — Death during her one mortal day a century — changes his mind about life.

If you’ve read The Sandman, you know Death is quite a bit more complicated than just a cute and quirky girl who likes top hats and Disney movies and tends to charm people into giving her things. Her happy-go-lucky optimism serves as a counterbalance to her dark responsibilities. But out of the context of that mythology, she’s just another girl that serves her purpose for a male protagonist before dying. Separated from Death, Didi just feels like a means to an end.

In that way, it’s a story that feels different to me now. I was never a huge fan of the character of Death anyway, it was easy to identify with her in this book as a teen. There was a sense of “Well, I wear weird clothes and like strange things. Maybe some boy may recognize how cool I am too.” But as an adult, I recognize how many Sexton Furnivals there are in the world and I wonder why their stories get told more than women’s. Why did we get the story from his perspective and not Didi’s? Death: The High Cost of Living is a cute little fable, but it’s story overall is one I’m tired of.

I wish I had also read Kill Your Boyfriend as a teen alongside Death: The High Cost of Living. I think they play off each other nicely. Teenage girls deserve more than the one story they’re usually given.

Near Miss is a semi-regular feature that will be appearing on Comicsgirl throughout 2013. This project is sponsored by Big Planet Comics.