Recently-Read-Reviews

first off, i want to post a picture from the NY pride parade. all my pictures totally sucked, and this one does too, but at least it's of drag versions of Wonder Woman and Supergirl holding hands. i can't remember for sure, but i think they were holding a sign saying they'd been happily married for a number of years, or something to that effect. they were a big hit, at least to me. gaw bless those two gay nerds for dressing up as super women.

on to some reviews of recently-read comics.

Steady Beat by rivkah

i expected this comic to be a little clumsy because it's by a young, new comics artist, and i expected it to be written to a younger audience. but i was still pretty disappointed by it. the most interesting thing that happens is that the younger sister/main character, leah, finds a love letter written by a girl to her sister. it's a pretty important plot point that should get the ball rolling (ha ha, the main characters are soccer players, anyways--) but it happens at the very beginning and doesn't actually seem to kick anything off at all (i just did it again). finding a lesbian love letter to your sister seems like it would really shake you up and make you ask a lot of questions, and at least put you on edge for awhile, but leah, while mildly curious about who the girlfriend is, doesn't seem very psychologically invested in the mystery. the rest of the book is about her meeting "cute" boys and encountering unfunny "comedic" situations and characters. the central conflict ends up seeming pretty tepid. the "queer tease" at the beginning with the love letter doesn't pan out to anything involving the actual lesbians in question, although maybe it will in subsequent volumes. i have to say the author has potential and will probably get better with more titles. at least most of the art is pretty solid, although the weird facial proportions are troubling.

another side of this book that i feel a little squirmy about is that it is labeled "manga" even though it is by a non-japanese person in not-japan. i often feel very, very embarassed for people i know in america trying to imitate a japanese style. i was a teacher's assistant for a drawing class a few years back, and one of the girls did all her drawings in a terrible, terrible fake-manga style. i wanted to cry for her everyday. rivkah, the author of "steady beat," is a good artist, but the fake-manga of it still bothers me. i can't help but feel a shame for the cultural appropriation of it. but that's maybe just my shit.

American Born Chinese by gene luen yang

there's nothing queer in this story, unfortunately, unless you'd like to read the whole cultural minority thing as a queer experience, which i'm sure you're welcome to do.

i liked the graphic art style and the use of folktales as allegory. the story of the chinese-american boy struggling with his identity as the child of chinese immigrants in a mostly-white school is very effectively told. however, i thought the author pulled some punches. instead of any real critique of the white community's treatment of the chinese-american community, he instead seems to emphasize that we should all just accept ourselves, recognize what damage shame about our heritage can do to our souls, and live happily ever after. a lot of the varied and complicated feelings and situations that stem from being a descendent of immigrants of color in a racist society get dropped on the wayside in the story. i couldn't help but think (much too bitterly, i'm sure) that overcoming my personal shame would not keep me from being killed in iran for being a gay feminist jew-lover. i know that's an entirely different scenario, but there are connections between them.

i also wondered at the very stereotypical treatment of dating, and (heterosexual) teenage relationships in the story. did the author mean to make the situations seems very dull, so that the emphasis on the cultural and racial issues could come out more obviously?

(perhaps my criticisms also stem from the loud-mouthed clerk at the comic book store where i bought the book. he was loudly stating everything he liked and disliked about certain comics, whether anyone was listening or not, and at some point he saw me pick up "american born chinese" and he started shouting what he thought of it to the other clerk, as if i maybe i would think it was cool that he had noticed me or something. hate the guy.)

anyway, i mostly enjoyed reading american born chinese, and am interested in the other things gene luen yang has worked on, or will work on in the future.

xxxHolic by CLAMP

i found xxxHolic at the local library and decided to try it out, even though "by the authors of chobits!!" was stamped on the front of each book. i realize CLAMP has written a ton of stuff, but the fact that the publisher decided to draw a connection to chobits specifically, a title i found totally disgusting, threw me off.

the opening scenario is that a young orphan (who is good, and kind, and can cook and clean, but is very whiny and complainy, and can see spirits) named watanuki gets trapped into servitude by a sexy, quirky, older (i think--who can tell what age she is supposed to be portrayed as?) magical woman. that's all we need to get the series off. i enjoy the magical/spiritual bent of the stories. and there's even a bit of queerness being hinted at in the stories. i haven't read enough of it yet, but watanuki seems to be developing a sort of screwball comedy romance with a male friend, even though he's been crushing on a cute girl from the beginning of the first book. i'm rooting for the boys, of course.

maybe i'm just a sucker for sexy "older" women myself, and wouldn't mind falling into yuuko-san's clutches, personally. if i was a manga character instead of a real person, of course.

the interplay between the characters is nuanced enough that the story manages to mostly escape big cliche characterizations (the hero overcoming his tragic past, the cute-innocent-love-interest- girl, the stoic male pal) and the presence of the ambiguous "dimensional witch" helps. however, many of the plotlines reveal an odd bias against women and girls. the clients that come to the witch are all women, and all are harshly punished for behaving outside of the gender norm. one character is revealed to have killed her friend, but no reason at all is given for it. one just has to assume it was her natural, female, jealous, murderous, impulse. and obviously the bitch deserves to die for her crime.

on a side note, if i had not picked up xxxHolic, i would never have known that "cardcaptor sakura" has a gay love story (or two) in it. there are descriptions of xxxHolic's connections to other CLAMP stories in the back of each book, and xxxHolic is connected to the tsubasa reservoir chronicle (or whatever the hell it's called) story, which is itself an off-shoot of "cardcaptor sakura." yay gay love stories!