Scream & be free

I found Amrit Brar's work on tumblr about a week ago. I saw exactly one post she had made involving a new tarot suite and its minor arcana and within an hour I'd bought one of her books and a patch.

Amrit Brar is SUCH A FUCKING GOOD ILLUSTRATOR, PLEASE GO FOLLOW HER ON A SHITLOAD OF PLATFORMS AND GIVE HER LOTS OF MONEY IF YOU CAN. (Instagram Tumblr Twitter StorEnvy, btw, in case searching was too much effort.)

Anyway, Shitty Horoscopes is an amazing anthology of bleak, funny, hope/ful/less messages about an uncertain future. It's all skulls and knives and roses, it's beautiful and sad, and I wish I could have a new page every day forever. Brar should do all of the horoscopes ever. Astrologers should all cede their jobs to her, she's the only one who gets how indifferent the universe is and communicates that to the reader while still evoking a "lol, same" reaction.

It's amazing?

For a book with so little writing it's incredibly sharply written, each horoscope lands almost like a poem. The illustrations are infuriatingly good, they make me sad that I'm not anywhere near as good as Brar is and make me want to work harder and better as an illustrator.

I'm obsessed. I ordered this book as soon as I found out it existed and immediately grabbed onto it like a hungry little goblin and never wanted it to leave. It's been more than a month since I've read it but it still lives on my desk so that I can occasionally flip through the pages and marvel at the art.

GOOD FUCKING JOB. I LOVE YOU.

Anyway, I'm 100% serious please order all of this book that you can reasonably order, I recommend it as a birthday gift, especially for people who are skeptical about horoscopes.

Cheers,
     - Alli

ORDER IT HERE.

(oh, this entry is called "Scream & be free" because my order from Brar's Storenvy page came with a couple of postcards, one of which was an adorable and tired bat flapping over the legend "scream & be free" and it really resonated with me.

Monstrously Amusing

I had to wait months for My Monster Boyfriend to arrive, but when it finally came in it was worth it. The book is a collection of graphic short stories about monstrous lovers and it's fantastic. Every story is erotically delightful, the art is amazing, and it's just generally top-notch porn, usually paired with a great story to boot.

It grabs you immediately from the holo foil printed, steamy, bodice-ripper inspired cover. The art inside is even better.

Look, all of the monsters are terrifying, but that's what makes them so compelling as potential partners. There are some "monsters" in this collection who are protectors, there are some who are less monstrous than their human counterparts, there are some who aren't really monsters at all but who are powerful and intimidating and their eroticism is enhanced by that power.

"My Monster Boyfriend" is a compelling concept for a collection of erotic fiction and really I think the end result here is stunning. I honestly can't imagine anything that would make this collection better. The art is all wonderful, the stories are well written, the printed product is magnificent. I also am incredibly pleased with the length of the thing  - it's big, fat, hefty, and all that you need to fill you up. (Okay, sorry, I got started and couldn't stop) An anthology usually consists of lots of very short works with the occasional longer piece but My Monster Boyfriend gives each of its stories the space they need to develop. The pacing for each story is perfect to build character so that you end up interested in the sex and the relationships depicted instead of just reading through quickly. There are sometimes whole pages just building character, giving space to see the picture of the worlds these people occupy. The longer structure of each story is fairly unusual from the anthologies I've read but I found it tremendously enjoyable that these were closer to being graphic novellas than they were to being single-issue-floppy length - the shortest story is ten pages long (and is the most comedic story in the collection, Spoilsport, by the wonderful Trudy Cooper whose comic Oglaf is a great example of erotic comedy at its finest).

Also no question, the story "Nebula" by Savannah Horrocks is the straight-up best tentacle/goo-monster porn I've ever fucking read. It is *SO* sexy, high fives, good job.

And that's basically everything in this collection? Each story is fantastic on its own, a great example of its genre, and made me super horny. Also there was at least one story that made me cry.

This is perfect. My Monster Boyfriend is great. C. Spike Trotman continues to make wonderful choices as an editor and put out books that should make tons of money because they are excellent books.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Here's where you can get the ebook for $15 - do it!

Stuff in Space!

Okay, I'll start by saying that there were several stories that I liked in this anthology and that overall I liked that it means there's an anthology of science fiction/space stories that includes people who are disabled and black and women and queer - I very much like that this is a thing that exists in the world.

However.

The anthology is somewhat poorly organized and difficult to follow, unfortunately. I kept wondering if the story I was reading had ended or if a page had been printed out of order and just kind of generally what was happening. There were also sudden and wild tonal shifts that were a bit jarring. And a couple of the stories were physically difficult to read and had art that made the action difficult to parse.

That all being said there was a high enough ratio of good to less-good that I'm happy I own Enough Space for Everyone Else and I'm 100% sure that I'll be coming back to read some of the stories again and again.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Here's where you can find Enough Space for Everyone Else.

Femmedom Fun

Yes, Roya is a delight. If you like m/f, m/m, or m/m/f porn or a combination of all three you should buy this book and read it. If you like all of the above and are also something of a kinkster into d/s stuff you should have ALREADY bought this book and read it. It's beautiful, it's staggeringly erotic, and has a surprising amount of story from a book that I frankly expected to be just straight-up porn.

Emilee Denich's art is so lovely in this book. She does a great job of capturing the 60s vibe of the story's setting but also creates magnificent little artistic asides that we get to see because two of the characters in the story are artists with vastly different styles. Every stroke is well thought out and perfectly placed, there is nothing about the art in this erotic graphic novel that falls flat.

The story has much more depth than I had anticipated - it gets right down into the down-and-dirty that brought everyone to the story in the first place but also touches on societal attitudes about women, masculinity, race, and art. It's also wonderful to watch the seduction of Wylie, who goes from a young man confused by his feelings to a person who is sure of himself and his desires. It makes me wish that the admirable C. Spike Trotman was writing *even more* than the wonderful jumble of stuff she's already producing.

I read Yes, Roya twice the first night I got it and I've read it twice since - I can't put it down and I don't want to, it's such a relaxing little world of sex and joy to disappear into.

Cheers,
     - Alli

You can get the PDF ebook of Yes, Roya here.

The book of Book

It's nice to learn about the Shepard. He probably ties with River for the most interesting character in the whole 'Verse and his appearances in Serenity and Firefly are chock-full of cryptic clues about his past.

Of all the Serenity comic collections I've read in the last year The Shepard's Tale is by far the most cohesive and compelling. Its structure is unique to the series, largely running backward, and it reveals enough of Book's backstory to give him gravitas but doesn't get into enough minutiae to bore you with the character.

I think the graphic novel is helped by the fact that it's largely plotless. Book's story is a closed circuit, we know he was born at some point and we know when he dies so there's a limit to what can be done that erases the need for an action-driven plot and lets you wallow in characterization.

I mean it's not completely without a plot, the book has a skeleton of a story that runs backward in time but the story is totally secondary to learning Book's motivations and personality. He comes away stronger when you know the secrets he's full of.

I liked The Shepard's Tale a lot better than I've liked any of the other Serenity books and I think it's probably the end of the line for me; I don't want to read any more, I think this is the best I'm going to get out of this world, and it feels like it's okay to walk away from the story now. Maybe someday I'll want to hear what ever happened to River or Simon but for now I have enough answers about this world and I'm happy to walk away from it with The Shepard's Tale as my last step along the way.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Here's where you can find it on Amazon.

Missing pieces and quiet pages

Better Days and Other Stories is basically a collection of Firefly vignettes. None of the stories is long enough for an arc on its own but all of them are worth adding to the Firefly Universe.

That said, you can probably skip it. I liked reading these little bits and bobs that filled in details of the 'Verse, but none of them really seemed to give any extra dimension or depth to the characters. We know Wash is awesome. We know he kicks ass. We're all sad he's gone. Turns out the characters are sad too. Okay.

Zoe's story about being a resistance fighter after the peace was signed is probably the most interesting add-on, but even that is something that viewers could have put together from the materials in the TV series and Serenity. Having extra details doesn't make her more compelling, it just gives you extra details.

I have one more Firefly collection to review and I think that's it for me. I'm bored with these books to the point that I'm glad the series got cancelled. If it had continued like this instead of progressing as a story I'd have given up on it. When I finished watching the show I wanted more, when I saw Serenity it felt like not enough, but after having read these comics I feel like the movie was really all the closure that fans needed. These comics could theoretically run forever and that's a daunting, depressing thing to contemplate. I don't need to see Zoe coping with single motherhood, I don't need to see Mal and Inara bickering over her work forever, I don't need to watch Kailee tinkering with a ship. River and Simon are interesting characters who DO have a lot that could be done with them, maybe tracking down other kids who were experimented on like River or finding help for her that could also cure the Reavers or *something* but that's not the sort of story I'm seeing from these comics and so I sort of don't want to continue reading them.

Which is a bummer. But also kind of a relief.

Cheers,
     - Alli

I'm pretty sure no one is using this blog as reference so I don't give a shit about putting together an MLA-correct citation for this book here's the Amazon link.

Pleasing to the palate

The Ladies' Night Anthologies are collections of comics by women that are meant to bring together creators so that their work can be shared with new audiences. It's a great idea and helpful to authors, artists, and readers alike. In fact I liked the idea so much that I participated in the Kickstarter and ended up with a print copy of Ladies' Night IIII, Eat it Up.

Now, to be 100% honest this is at least partially because I am tumblr mutuals with Evelyn Zottler (whom all of you reading this should go follow) and I wanted to support her work because in 2015 we had a great internet comic conversation about pumpkin spice and she has since included a drawing of me in one of the coloring books she made. I love E*phi, she's the best, and her art kicks ass and she's a badass derby girl and tattooist and in general just rules.

But so does everything else about this book! It starts with a comic about a nonbinary person who shares one of my chronic illnesses and moves on to stories about representation and burly chocolate factory owners and friends getting in trouble with food over a language barrier. It's great, I love that it's a book about food and women and art and supporting each other and I'm so happy that I have it.

If you want to read the book to support indie artists or see some excellent representation of marginalized groups or to just work up an appetite you totally should! It's a fun SFW collection of beautifully illustrated comics that are all written with warmth and kindness and skill. I loved everything about it and I'm so glad I have it. Get it for yourself by clicking this sentence!

Cheers,
     - Alli

Various Authors. Ed. Megan Byrd. Ladies' Night Vol. IIII: Eat it Up. Ladie's Night
     Anthology. Chicago: Illinois. 2016.

Eco-education

Gary Larson is a funny man. I've read volumes and volumes of Far Side comics, which I started collecting from book fairs as a child, but I had never read There's a Hair in my Dirt until a link to the book as a PDF crossed my Tumblr dashboard.

The book is a funny, somewhat mean exploration of the problems that arise from people who want to take care of the world but know nothing about it. It follows the story of Princess Harriet, a beautiful lady who is keen to interact with the nature around her but who consistently gets things wrong because she tries to support cute, pretty creatures and save little cuddly animals but is disgusted with snakes and slimy things. She has a big footprint in her little natural world but almost everything that she does makes a negative impact on the world around her.

She tries to rescue a turtle crossing the road and ends up drowning what was really a tortoise, she feeds the cute animals in her forest and ends up supporting an invasive species that drives out the local animals, and finally she rescues a mouse from a "mean" snake. She ends up getting hantavirus from the mouse because she didn't realize that snakes are a valuable form of pest control that's much more helpful than harmful to humans who share environments with wildlife. It is the hair of dead Princess Harriet that is in stuck in a pile of dirt that serves as dinner for a little worm-boy; the story is framed by by his worm father recounting the tale of Harriet after his son complains about a hair in his dirt.

It is a little bit cruel, the worm family revels in the demise of Princess Harriet, but nature is cruel - or at least indifferent, and that's the main message of the book. You need to learn about nature because nature has no interest in taking care of you.

I think the main audience for this book is a lot like the kid I was when I was buying the Larson collections - a bright kid with an interest in science who also cackled over gross-out humor and is a bit morbid. I'm sure there are lots of kids out there who would really enjoy reading There's A Hair in my Dirt (the fact that it's a graphic novel of sorts might help) but it's got a message that's worthwhile for a lot of adults to internalize as well.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Larson, Gary. There's a Hair in my Dirt. Harper Perennial. New York: New York. 1998.

Tonal dissonance and sexist bull

Look, I don't hate horror comics, okay? I read through all of Wes Craven's Coming of Rage as floppies this year and enjoyed the hell out of all the blood and guts and gore, The Darkness is the one fucking thing that makes me want to play video games, and any of Stephen King's horror/novel crossover books like The Cycle of the Werewolf are the kind of shit that makes me get up in the morning.

I am also, just by pure happenstance and a long history as a goth kid, not totally ignorant about various forms of witchcraft, including modern branches like LaVeyan Satanism, Theistic Satanism, and Wicca as well as older forms of Paganism, Shamanism, and herbal medicine that are considered witchcraft these days.

AND I have tons of fond memories of reading Archie Comics as a kid and was totally the nerd who had to be home for TGIF to watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch every week.

With those things in mind (that I like horror comics, am kind of into witchcraft, and am familiar with the canon of the universe) The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is shit.

Look pals, just because you CAN grimdark something doesn't mean that you SHOULD. Instead of the light-hearted buffoonery and issue-of-the-week lessons of the original comics and various TV iterations THIS version of Sabrina features the affable Aunts Hilda and Zelda as gluttonous cannibals. In one case a totally harmless woman has her daughter taken from her, is driven insane and institutionalized, and then has her sanity restored so she can suffer more. (SPOILERS) Harvey's mother, driven mad by his death, brutally murders her husband as he tries to protect her. (/Spoilers)

I'm just going to take a second to point out that while witches were frequently accused of human sacrifice and cannibalism it isn't actually something we see much in the European history of witchcraft. Also absent from European witchcraft traditions: the need for a woman to protect her virginity in order to become a witch. That's getting into some gross sexist-as-fuck Gardner shit which, A) doesn't make sense if Hilda and Zelda did the same thing and are supposed to be centuries old and, B) SHOULDN'T SHOW UP IN A COMIC BOOK ABOUT A FUCKING MINOR. (Because, yes, kindly dumbbell jock Harvey is pressuring Sabrina into sex and she can't have sex with him before her sixteenth birthday and still be a witch because what the actual fuck.)

I've seen some commentary about the fact that this book allows women to exist without the need for men as a woo-girl-power kind of thing but that totally ignores the fact that men are also witches and seem to get their way more often (Sabrina's dad's illegal relationship with her mom, for instance) and are supposed to be the virgin servants of a distinctly masculine entity. Also how the hell does the virginity thing hold up - Edward Spellman had a relationship with Lady Satan (the actual FUCK.) before getting his rocks off with a mortal who both he and Lady Satan would eventually torture. Lady Satan also murders the kindly old drama teacher at Sabrina's high school so that she can fill in the position and fill out some decidedly cheescake-inspired suits. For a comic that is supposed to be about women and that some people are offering up as a vehicle for powerful female characters it sure does think of a lot of women as disposable.

What a fucking mess. I like comics but even the pacing of this whole thing feels off - the rising tension of each issue is predictable and tedious, the whole comes to an unsatisfying conclusion, character development is not even on the fucking radar - it's just untidy and the writing seems like it was hurriedly scribbled in the journal of a tween boy who wanted to show it to his friends so they could see how dark and twisted and TOTALLY MASCULINE I GET BONERS FOR HOT LADIES OKAY his mind is.

That's actually another thing I have beef with - one witchy-type article discussed the fact that witches are presented as ugly to match the ugliness of their deeds; that they don't need beauty because their power makes them above it. Well. Sure, that's true, at least of all the witches who are supposed to be over a certain age. Sabrina is cute and sexy by turns and Lady Satan is sexy as fuck, even if she does have to steal faces from mortals.

This book is Sabrina the Teenage Witch as scripted by Eli Roth. It's maybe good enough for a rejected GWAR album cover but probably not even that. You care about the people being ripped to shreds on a GWAR cover, their faces convey pain and horror. Not so here.

Which is the only negative thing that I have to say for the art. The faces aren't great at conveying emotion but I can't tell if that's a lack of practice or if poor Robert Hack just had too much going on in each page to convey the appropriate emotional response in every panel. Jumping from a discussion of physical intimacy and young love to the ritual preparations to slaughter a goat is enough to make any artist tear their hair out, let alone one who hadn't worked on ANY sequential books before this. Hack does a fantastic job with what he was given to work with, and I think the art is stellar. It's got a great vibe that instantly recalls Rosemary's Baby and tries to set a mood much better than any of the writing does. I think Hack is a great horror artist and I hope he continues working in horror comics, I just wish he'd had a writing team worthy of his talent and skill for his first run out of the gate.

(UGH, FUCK, I just realized that Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is the one adapting The Stand to comics and fuck half of me wants to read it and see how it went and the other half of me thinks that even the original novel did way too much of the "women are commodities in the apocalypse" bullshit that I feel like Aguirre-Sacasa would have just made worse. FUCK)

Cheers,
     - Alli

Aguirre-Sacasa, Roberto (Writer). Hack, Robert (Illustrator). The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
     Vol. 1: The Crucible. Archie Comics. New York: New York. 2016

Missing pieces

Funfact: If you ask me to buy you a comic book for Christmas I will read it before I give it to you. I don't make the rules, that's just how these things work, and I am aware that this is kind of a dick move.

I also sort of don't care that it's kind of a dick move because it gets me to read comics that I otherwise wouldn't and that can be tremendously edifying.

I don't know why my sister decided she wanted Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven, but I must say it's a good choice. The Princess Bride - that's probably why she wants it: she's super into the book and the movie and recently read Cary Elwe's memoir so I'm sure that's a contributing factor.

As a comic it's a pretty decent offering. The art is compelling and dream-like, presenting you with images that communicate their subjects well but are always a bit off - whether it's glowing eyes or exaggerated features the characters don't fit into the real world, just the larger-than-life story of Andre the Giant's life. As a story it's a bit simple. The character of Andre narrates the man's life and does so in clear language that is touching and a bit predictable. There's real human tragedy and a great deal of success but I feel like it's lacking something important. There's a depth and emotion missing from the whole thing that I felt throughout.

Robin Rou____'s letter at the beginning of the graphic novel has this quintessence that's missing elsewhere. Her pain is real and her love and distance from her father is well communicated. I can't tell what she's got that the rest of the book doesn't - if it's honesty or bitterness or mourning - but I do feel like something's missing.

I probably never would have read this book on my own, and I'll probably never read it again, but it's a great offering for artists looking for inspiration and a decent choice as a book to read through at the library or comic shop.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Easton, Brandon and Denis Medri. Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven. Lion Forge Comics.
     San Diego: California. 2015

Delicious porn

Megan Rose Gedris got her book, Eat Me, funded on Kickstarter. I supported it, I got the book, and I'm super happy. I donated at a level that got me two books, Eat Me and Darlin' it's Betta. Darlin' it's Betta is more of what you'd traditionally expect when you hear the word "porn" - it doesn't have much plot but it has a TON of sex. Eat Me also has a lot of sex but also has a much deeper level of story that pulls you along and makes the sex more tantalizing as you're taking a break between erotic scenes.

The story is that Rhonda, a low-level employee at a pharmaceutical company, gets a secret formula spilled on her that sends her into a universe where all the food for human is sentient people who need to be seduced before they'll allow a bit of themselves to be eaten. It's a really adorable take on vampire mythology where humans become the supernatural monsters. There ARE bad humans in the foodiverse who will eat the food folks without consent and Rhonda teams up with Lisa to fight the big bad monsters to protect the food folks.

There's more to it but I don't want to spoil anything because the plot is fun to work through and the sex becomes secondary to the story for a large part of the book. There's also a really sweet little love story that is a nice element which builds slowly and makes the book more of a fulfilling meal than just a sugar rush.

Also it's incredibly beautiful - the imagination and artistry that went into creating a sexy food universe is brilliant and really is a great example of why I like Megan Rose Gedris so much as an artist and author. She goes a step further than just straight-up porn and turns it into an immersive experience that switches from high-contrast black-and-white to vibrant, full color pages. It's just fantastic from beginning to end and I can't recommend her work enough - go buy some!

Cheers,
     - Alli

Gedris, Megan Rose. Eat Me. Rosalarian. Chicago: Illinois. 2016.

Sexy mermaids for miles

I've reviewed Megan Gedris' work before - she's great, click on any part of this sentence to go to her website and buy stuff from her. I recently participated in a Kickstarter campaign for her new book Eat Me, but I purchased a bundle that included her graphic novel Darlin' it's Betta Down Where it's Wetta, which is a story about a girl and a mermaid coming together for sexytimes and then coming together.

It's great! It's beautiful, it's sexy, it's erotic, it's full of lovely illustrated vaginas having a great time getting tickled, titillated, and teased by tentacles. There is some plot, there is a story that progresses, but the story is secondary to watching a whole bunch of women have a great time pleasuring each other and themselves.

If you like women, if you like women who love women, if you like porn, and if you like graphic novel versions of all of the above this is 100% something that you should check out.

Also A+ for including stunning, sexual fat women. I always enjoy it when there are diverse body-types in porn but it felt very special that the main character through the whole comic was a fat woman who enjoyed discovering her body and how to pleasure herself.

There's not a whole lot else to say - this is all just a fun story about sexy girls getting laid.

And it's great!

Cheers,
     - Alli

Gedris, Megan Rose. Darlin' it's Betta Down Where it's Wetta. Rosalarian. Grand Rapids:
     Michigan. 2012

Prim and proper porn

Look, you don't have to tell me, I'm WELL AWARE of the fact that I read a lot of pornographic comic books. In fact I'm currently excitedly waiting for delivery of THREE smutty comics from Kickstarters I supported. Which is exactly where I got two lovely volumes from Jess Fink's Chester 5000 universe.

Chester 5000 XYV and Isabelle & George are delightful little porno comics, each is made up of beautifully illustrated standalone comic pages that come together into stunning stories full of affection, humor, and lots of fucking. Chester is the story of a Victorian lady who falls hard for the boner-bot her harried husband builds as an outlet for her energy, and Isabelle & George tells the story of that same harried husband beginning a partnership with another inventor and his wife - with some INCREDIBLY unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Both books make for quick reads in some ways - they have no dialogue and very few words pop up on any of the pages. In other ways they're good books to take your time with, at the very least so you don't get the lavishly drawn pages sticky.

These are A+ 100% worth the money I spent on them (and I got a cool enamel pin that nobody understands to wear on my battle vest) and I highly recommend that if you're looking for some classy lady-on-robot fuckin' or some classy dude-and-dude-and-lady fuckin' that you pick these up and spend some time enjoying them.

Also Jess Fink is a rad artist who has done lots of rad things, and she's an independent artist so you should go follow her on social media and check out her stuff and buy things that she sells by clicking anywhere on this sentence.

Fink, Jess. Chester 5000 XYV. Top Shelf Productions. New York: New York. 2015
Fink, Jess. Isabelle & George. Canada. 2016

Out of the dark

Aliens: The Original Comics Series wasn't what I thought it would be - a straight comic adaptation of the second film of the Alien franchise - it was significantly cooler and more exciting than that.

This series is everything that everything after Aliens should have been. It was a great exploration of characters we're already attached to, has a compelling story and some horrifying visuals, and keeps your pulse up as you turn the pages in a way that rarely happens in comic books and NOW rarely happens in Alien films.

It feels like every bit of it belongs in the franchise in a way that is much more intuitive and fascinating than something like, say, Prometheus. *shudder*

The art is almost unspeakably great in almost every part of the story (the space jockeys look pretty stupid, honestly, and nothing at all like the delirious Geiger biomechanics that populate the rest of the franchise) and really shines in covers and two-page spreads. The introduction talks some about how the art was pulled off using a now-defunct product that allowed for incredibly careful control of halftones and that I find stunning, perplexing, and impossible to visualize. But I don't have to visualize the end results - they're in beautiful black and white on the page and they hold up as great examples of horror/sci-fi comic work in a genre that apparently hasn't had much motivation to improve in 30 years.

I really want to talk about the story but don't really know how to without totally fucking it up for someone who might be coming fresh to it. It's deep and heady and full of twists and turns that build tension and make you sad and scared and carry you along with the characters. It's brilliantly done and I can't wrap my head around the fact that we got Alien Resurrection and fucking Prometheus instead of an adaptation of this comic series. Those movies were bad enough before I knew that there was a fucking genius extension to the canon of the cinematic universe, and that this much more engaging story was passed over for Damon Lindhoff foolishness.

Aliens: The Original Comics Series is a great fast read that I really would strongly recommend to sci-fi fans, Alien fans, and grownups who don't know if comics are a medium they can take seriously, and anybody who's looking for a new series they can eat up all at once. It's really well done, and though I'm sad I didn't know about it before an extra copy showed up in my Dad's Loot Crate a couple months ago, I'm really happy to have read it and think it was well worth the couple of hours it takes to work through the whole thing.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Vernheiden, Mark. Mark A. Nelson. Aliens: The Original Comics Series. Dark Horse Comics.
     Milwauke: Oregon. 2016. (1986).

Ouch

Anna Archie Bongiovanni has cartooned for Everyday Feminism at the same time that I have, so I got the opportunity to chat with them a couple of times. They gave me some great advice for how to handle minicomics and how to put my work out there so that the people who I wanted to see it would see it. Part of the reason that this advice was so special to me was because I'd seen samples of their wonderful book, Out of Hollow Water, and I realized what a wonderful artist and creator they are. I recently had some Barnes & Noble gift cards to spend and was delighted to find that Out of Hollow Water was available through the book behemoth.

The book is. Um. Really intense. Really, really intense. Like I feel the need to give pretty strong trigger warnings.

It's a beautiful, small book. Only about 100 pages and with the rough dimensions of a CD it sits easily in your hands as it digs into your heart. It tells either three distinct story or one contorted story, and the simplicity of the narration is such that it's up to the reader to decide how the story is structured.

The art is staggering. Instead of the hard lines and flat colors Bongiovanni uses for their online comics Out of Hollow Water is full of soft graphite layers that show missteps and sketch lines through the bold strokes that reach out to the reader. It feels incredibly intimate and organic, unpolished but not unfinished. It honestly is one of the most beautiful graphic novels I've ever encountered.

The story is difficult. When I first sat down to read it I ended up going through the book three times end-to-end letting it wash over me and percolate in my mind. It's jarring and scary and sad. It hurts to read; it makes you worry for the characters, the author, yourself.

I loved it but it's hard to recommend. I'd say it's for people who need to heal but maybe it's more for people who know that healing isn't easy or pretty, it's messy and sordid. There's no right way to heal but there are many wrong ways and that's part of what this amazing little book explores.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Bongiovanni, Anna Archie. Out of Hollow Water. 2Cloud Publishing. Minneapolis: Minnesota. 2013.

A rocky start

Two years ago my sister got me one of the Serenity graphic novels as a Christmas present. Unfortunately it was the 4th in the series. Fortunately I have access to a wonderful comic shop and bought myself issues 1-3 for Christmas and have finally gotten around to reading Serenity: Those Left Behind, the first issue in the series.

It's okay?

The Firefly universe is an interesting animal. Each new piece of it is messy. The show itself was cancelled after only a single season, the movie was a bit slapdash and ended up not getting a very good box office response, and the comic books are competently made but shallow in comparison to the show.

I already know that the fourth issue has a good story so I'm not too concerned that the first issue wasn't great - clearly somewhere in between the publishing of those two arcs the writers found their footing and decided what kind of story they were going to tell, and that's really what's missing out of issue one.

In the comic we're reintroduced to all the characters that Firefly fans already know - so it's actually a great entry point for people who want to read a sci-fi/western comic but haven't seen the show or movie. But if you have seen anything else in the 'verse it drags on a bit. The story does give a bit more background into the war that Malcolm Reynolds was a part of, and does a decent job of explaining why he's such a kind scoundrel sort of character.

But I only read it about a week ago and can't remember the central conflict, which is a bit of a problem. That tells me this story was generic. I know there was a dude who wanted to kill Mal but I'm still not really sure what the backstory on that is. I know there's a spacebattle that takes place within ships left behind after a different spacebattle. All in all this wasn't a particularly great book. It looked good, it did give us the story of what happened to Shepard and Inara between Firefly and Serenity, but that's about all it does.

Too bad, but at least I know it got better (and I have two more of the books sitting on my TBR shelf to cement my opinions).

Cheers,
     - Alli

Story: Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews. Script: Brett Matthews. Art: Will Conrad. Colors: Laura
     Martin. Letters: Michael Heisler. Cover art: Adam Hughes. Serenity Firefly Class 03-K64: Those
     Left Behind. Dark Horse Books. Milwaukie: Oregon. 2012. (2007)

Tasty, tasteful porn

Y'all, I've bought so much porn this year, and so much of it through awesome Kickstarters; I hope anyone reading this is 100% okay with me talking lots and lots about cartoon humping because there's a lot more to come.

Food Porn is a collection put together by Filthy Figments (which is an AWESOME, women-driven subscription porn site that you should totally look into if you're looking for some great wank material). The book is organized around the dual themes of food and sex, and each short story is accompanied by a recipe for something that sounds super tasty. I donated to the Kickstarter at a level that allowed me to end up with both the collected, soft-cover stories and a coil-bound cookbook of the recipes by themselves. I'm going to be honest, the coil-bound cookbook is a bit disappointing; each page is laid out by the author of the comic and some pages are very hard to read. It might have been slightly more effective as a cookbook if the editors had stuck with a more conventional cookbook layout and maybe had just a single illustration for each recipe, but overall you can tell that a lot of effort was put into the recipe pages and that's nice. The stories themselves are great and some of them are incredibly fucking sexy, so the porn portion is a-okay and I've got no complaints about it.

"Following Directions" by Kori Michele (Recipe: Sally's Simple Veggie Soup)
An adorable couple get more than they bargained for when they read a recipe slightly wrong - silly puns abound as the issue is resolved with a little unexpected help.

"Safe Harbor" by Kickingshoes (Recipe: Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi)
Aaaah! Aaaah! When a fisherman finds a secret cove he has the adventure of a lifetime with two shark-men who help him make his catch after helping him with something else. (SOOOOO PRETTY)

"Food Talk" by Boltplum (Recipe: Raggmunk)
A couple discusses the desire for a taste of home and adjusting to change all while having a good time connecting on a very personal level.

"Quick Distraction" by Scotty (Recipe: Cream of Mushroom Enchiladas)
A chef takes advantage of her boyfriend's poor cooking skills while they wait for a whole chicken to boil.

"Lion and the Lamb" by Niki Smith (Recipe: Arabian Style Leg of Lamb)
Spices warm up a cold winter night between lovers. (Niki Smith's art is off-the-charts amazing, just so you know)

"Knead and Rise" by Dechanique (Recipe: Homemade Pizza)
SO FUCKING CUTE AND SEXY - Pizzeria owners are surprised by the early arrival of a delivery-person; everyone takes advantage f the unexpected situation.

"Breakfast in Bed" by Dumpling Heart (Recipe: Taiwanese Rice Rolls)
A woman is frustrated by he boyfriend's abundance of kindness - he wakes early every morning to make her breakfast in bed but she wants a taste of something else.

"Complex Spice" by Tsukiyono (Recipe: Chicken Tikka Masala)
A woman returns home to find that her partner has made her favorite meal, but the taste of spices on skin is more appealing than dinner.

"Overload" by Apollo (Recipe: Apollo's Lava Overload Cake)
OMFG, honestly Apollo's sexy boys are the reason I signed up for Filthy Figments in the first place. This is a great example of why. A chocolate demon is on the warpath and about to wreck a strawberry demon's lovely home - the strawberry demon offers his pert ass for destruction instead and ends up wonderfully, happily wrecked. Lots of macro going on here and a not-quite-all-the-way-through money-shot. SO FUCKING HOT.

"A La Mode" by Gina Biggs (Recipe: Vegan Pumpkin Pie)
Things get saucy between a young couple with very few inhibitions in a public diner.

"Raspberry Heart" by TE Woodis (Recipe: Chocolate Mousse)
A mousse monster is on the loose and the super-hero Raspberry Heart needs some loving from her boyfriend before her heart is charged up enough to take care of this sticky situation.

"A Little Different" by Jamie Jennings (Recipe: Super Pink Cocktail and Watermelon Salad)
Trainee space-pals (I don't really know what either does other than bone in the comic) share a decadent meal and some delightful downtime before cuddling up to sleep.

"Nectar" by Aero Zero (Recipe: Honey Cake)
A king and his consort enjoy the nectar of the forest god, a potent aphrodisiac, before the god himself finds them and joins in on their fun.

"Crumble Me" by Ariel Vittori (Recipe: Soft Lemon-Clove Biscotti)
FUCKING HOT D/S ACTION - Master has been feeling ill so Master's Dirty Little Girl takes it upon herself to serve him (FUCKING GOD, this came out of nowhere for me, the art is so soft and sweet and the story is so kinky, dammit, GOOD WORK).

"Seaside Sweethearts" by SW Searle (Recipe: Apple Crunch)
A seaside picnic turns into a different kind of wet adventure as two lovers take advantage of an empty beach.

"Red Summer" by Molly Ostertag (Recipe: Pomegranate Syrup)
A woman is entranced by the beautiful girl who sells pomegranates at the  market - lots of luscious fruit imagery, great illustrations, sexy as fuck.

"Red Bean Buns" by Blue Delliquanti (Recipe: Red Bean Buns)
Aaaah! Cute lovers (one of whom is so fat and happy and lovable and just so fucking cute I can't handle it) get distracted from their baking project by their hunger for one another. SO CUTE.

"The Munchies" by Megan Rose Gedris (Recipe: Apple Chicken Pie)
Someone gets the munchies after enjoying some pot brownies, but it turns out she's hungry for something that isn't hiding in a cupboard.


Various Authors. Ed. Gina Biggs. Food Porn. Strawberry Comics. 2016.

Startlingly relevant

I promise that I like normal comic books - I'm currently reading Squirrel Girl and Giant Days, I just finished the six-issue run of Coming of Rage; there are normal, day-to-day supers and horror books in my life. I guess I just like giant political memoir comics better in some ways. Maus is almost incomprehensibly good, probably my favorite comic book of all time, and now that I've read Persepolis I have to say that it's reasonable competition for the title of greatest illustrated war story.

Which is saying a fucking lot - Persepolis is different from Maus in many ways; Satrapi is telling her own story whereas Spiegelman tells his father's story; Maus is the story of concentration camps and adults struggling to survive while Persepolis is about Satrapi largely evading the war as a child sent away by her parents, but both are compelling, simply-but-beautifully illustrated stories about people stifled by a world they have little control over and attempting to live in spite of facing unexpected horrors.

Marjane Satrapi's story follows her as a child in Iran and a teen and young adult in Europe before returning as an adult to Iran to find the changes that have warped her world since her parents sent her away to protect her. The difficulties Satrapi has acclimating to the various cultures she is a part of are communicated beautifully and pathetically - she doesn't hide the ugliness she experienced from others or that came from herself but honestly examines the person-to-person conflicts that can hit so much closer to home than news of a bombing or the sham election of a leader. Satrapi rarely has to fear for her life and physical safety the way that the Jews in Maus do but she is constantly afraid for her way of life, for her identity. She struggles under religious conservatism in Iran but is also injured by racism and xenophobia in Austria - in fact the problems of enlightened Europe take a greater physical toll on her than the bombings of Tehran took on her family and reconciling those experiences becomes a tremendous source of conflict within her that makes it impossible for her to maintain a foothold in the shifting sands of her life.

There's so much that happens in Satrapi's narrative that it feels cheap to attempt to summarize it here but I will say that this character spoke strongly to me - from a childhood of lofty, thwarted dreams to a lost adolescence isolated from home and family to a young adulthood hemmed in by a foreign morality Satrapi is pulled in dozens of directions and has a hard time finding a solid center to build a life on. And while I've had the privilege of growing up largely without the fear of war or bombs I can relate to the glazed confusion when being presented with a world that seems to be shedding the expected skin to expose something uglier underneath.

Satrapi's introduction makes it clear that she is writing to counter the image of Iranians as terrorists and religious extremists. She talks about a world rife with European xenophobia that bares its teeth at children fleeing a war. She talks about living in a country where women have few freedoms and fewer rights. And she talks about a wish to leave that behind in a brighter future, something that has unfortunately not yet come to pass. While this memoir is only 15 years old it seems unbearably optimistic in a world where I see all people from the Middle East being stereotyped as terrorists, where global xenophobia is rearing up against children fleeing wars, and a world in which women's rights have regressed in many places. I want the same future that Satrapi wanted, I just didn't have her words to make clear what was missing or how much we still need it.

I hope it happens. And I strongly recommend reading Persepolis to hear an Iranian voice calling for what so much of the world believes no Iranians want.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis.  Pantheon Books. New York: New York. 2004. (2000).

Lucid

Oh wow. Finally. Wow. What a book.

I started reading Yu+Me Dream when I was 18. It was originally published as a webcomic with somewhat erratic updates and at some point (actually pretty close to the end of the story) I stopped reading it. I just got caught up in other things and kind of never came back.

Years later I found Megan Rose Gedris's work elsewhere online and eventually started following her on tumblr. Not too long ago she started putting chapters of Yu+Me up on one of her secondary accounts and I started reading it again from the beginning. But then Gedris had an odd sort of month, decided to sell the backlog of books she had in her basement, and offered the Yu+Me omnibus edition for an incredibly great price and I just bought the whole thing.

Then sat down and raced through the whole story in about six hours as soon as the books were delivered.

It's. Well. It's just great. The art, the story, the characters, the journey. I love it. Gedris describes it as a surreal lesbian romance adventure comic but that doesn't get deep enough into what it is. It's Alice in Wonderland exploded. It's lucid dreaming you can hold in your hands. It's unbelievably beautiful and wonderfully complicated, and I am all about it. There are dozens of threads that intertwine throughout the story, each gently and inexorably tugging you along to the conclusion, calling to you and asking you to go just a little further down this bright, beautiful rabbit-hole to find out what happens.

If that sounds appealing to you you can read the whole comic on Gedris's website. I recommend you do that because holy shit is it amazing. If that doesn't sound appealing to you I don't know what to say to you - this is a great comic that everyone in the world can read for free. But what you should really do is read it then pay for it or buy something from the author's store because Megan Rose Gedris is too good for this world and generates so much wonderful content that she offers up to the world for free that we should do all we can to shower her in money.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Gedris, Megan Rose. Yu+Me Dream. Rosalarian. Grand Rapids: Michigan. 2014.

Fuck Allegory - the case for directness

Everyone knows that SciFi and Fantasy stories are allegorical. And usually they're pretty fucking political too, just in case you wanted to get yanked off about the Hugos. The Beyond Anthology basically says "fuck allegory, we're going to tell our fucking stories."


There have been LGBT characters in SciFi and Fantasy as long as those genres have existed. Look at Frankenstein, for fuck's sake. The relationship between Victor and his creation is way more important than any other relationship in the story, it was written by someone who spent a lot of time hanging out with Byron, and it's about forbidden explorations of humanity. It's clearly a queer novel. But for some reason stodgy folks in classrooms like to sidestep that and talk about god instead. So Beyond is a relief. There's no question here that the characters we're being shown fall under the queer umbrella. There's no room to claim that a character's transness isn't canon because transness is made explicit. So sexuality and gender identity in these stories aren't hidden under layers of outdated pear-clutching, which opens up some fascinating fictional possibilities.

It's also remarkable how little difference something so impactful makes to the stories. These are all great SciFi and Fantasy stories that ALSO allow LGBT readers to see themselves represented. The plot isn't sidelined by the backgrounds of the characters, the characters simply are who they are and the stories are amazing. It isn't labored, it doesn't ring false, it isn't a big deal - it's just great stories that happen to include LGBT characters, which is kind of a big deal.

I'm not making much sense, I know. I'm kind of too excited to make much sense. Beyond is fantastic. It's a joy to read. At least 5 of the stories were so touching they made me weep as I turned the pages. The art alternates between gorgeously realistic and unexpectedly cute from page to page, and it all works. This is a great collection, I love it, and I've gotta go find myself a copy because I borrowed this one from a friend.

So fuck allegory, at least some of the time. We shouldn't have to have straight/cis/white/male as the default in our SF&F anymore, we know those aren't the people reading the stories, writing the stories, or filling up the world. It's time to let everyone shine.

Cheers,
     - Alli

Monster, Sfe R. Ed. Various Authors. Beyond. 2015.