Tag: WWAC

Review of Loving, Ohio on WWAC

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I recently had the opportunity to write a review of Loving, Ohio, a graphic novel about a small town shadowed by the secrets of a cult. Here’s an excerpt…

Loving, Ohio is a powerful work of contemporary horror guided by a tense mystery that unravels against the backdrop of eerily evocative scenery. What makes this story truly disturbing is its resonance with the current cultural climate, in which exploitative religious organizations have become more mainstream while conspiracy theories are taken seriously by people looking for connection on social media. Loving, Ohio tells a compelling story that’s all the more haunting because of how critically relevant it is to the hidden monsters of contemporary American society.

You can read the full review on Women Write About Comics (here). You can read more about Matthew Erman on his website (here) and check out more of Sam Beck’s art (here). As always, I’d like to express my appreciation for my amazing and brilliant editor at WWAC, Kat Overland, who is admirably fearless and as sharp as ten knives.

Review of HoverGirls on WWAC

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I had the opportunity to review Geneva Bowers’s amazing graphic novel HoverGirls for Women Write About Comics. Here’s an excerpt…

HoverGirls includes a few battle scenes, but most of the story’s action takes place across the dialogue between characters. This type of interpersonal character drama is the element of action-oriented magical girl manga I always loved. As in Sailor Moon, the fighting is all well and good, but it mostly serves as a backdrop to what’s really important – character development. Each character has a distinct voice and motivations, and their conversations are augmented by humor and just the right amount of tension.

You can read the full review on WWAC (here). If you’re interested, you can read the comic online (here), check out the book’s official page (here), and see more of the artist’s work on her webpage (here). And, as always, I have nothing but gratitude for my brilliant editor, Kat Overland.

Essay on WWAC about Machiko Kyō’s Manga Cocoon

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I’m proud to have worked with the brilliant editorial team at Women Write About Comics on my essay “Nature and War Memory in Machiko Kyō’s Cocoon,” in which I discuss the imagery that propels the story of a heartbreaking graphic novel about the Pacific War.

An animated cinematic adaptation of Cocoon is scheduled to be released in Summer 2025. This is a high-profile project commissioned by NHK and directed by the veteran Studio Ghibli artist Hitomi Tateno, whose animation credits range from Spirited Away to The Wind Rises.

Although the essay (like the manga itself) should be approached with sensitivity to its content, I hope I was able to offer a small contribution to the international awareness of the narrative work of Machiko Kyō, a celebrated and prolific Japanese artist who has created some of the most groundbreaking manga of the past decade.

You can find my essay about Cocoon (here) on Women Write About Comics, an award-winning venue for media journalism covering pop culture from a diversity of perspectives. I’m extremely grateful for the support and excellent feedback of Emily Lauer (on Bluesky here), whose critical insight illuminates the discussions and reviews of genre fiction on WWAC.

WWAC Roundtable on LGBTQ+ Manga

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Last week I had the opportunity to contribute to a Pride Month roundtable on LGBTQ+ manga organized by Women Write About Comics. In this roundtable, we share specific recommendations as well as more general thoughts on topics such as autobiographical essay manga, nonbinary manga characters, and debates surrounding BL and yuri manga.

The discussion was quite interesting, and you can read it here:
https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2023/06/roundtable-pride-month-manga-edition/

This conversation was very cathartic for me personally. It was a traumatic experience to publish my monograph on queer manga, as I encountered incredible resistance during every step of the project. I’ve also been surprised by the feedback I’ve received, with critics claiming that I didn’t write enough about “real” queer creators. My book feels more cursed than the Necronomicon, and I’ve been extremely hesitant to talk about it or the research that went into it. Still, it felt good to finally address the issue of who “gets to count” as queer, as well as why many queer people in Japan may not have chosen to identify as such in the past.

Thankfully, the situation in Japan is starting to change, and WWAC’s Pride Month manga roundtable captures the spirit of this social and cultural shift as it’s reflected in popular discourse, especially in creative work by and about openly queer people exploring and celebrating their identities.

Space Trash Review on WWAC

~ Kathryn

My review of the first volume of Jenn Woodall’s lunarpunk graphic novel Space Trash has just been published on the website Women Write About Comics. Here’s an excerpt…

Una, Yuki, and Stab are three lowkey troublemakers who share a dorm room and dye each other’s hair while watching each other’s backs. The three young women mostly play by the rules until they’re challenged by a rival girl gang, the Trash Queens. Their brawl is broken up by the school’s robotic disciplinary wardens, which causes the two gangs to realize that they share something in common: a burning desire to upend a system that doesn’t serve their best interests.

You can read the full review (here), and you can follow Jenn Woodall on Twitter (here). Once again, I have nothing but gratitude and admiration for my brilliant editor, who brought a number of interesting parallels to my attention as I was thinking about how to approach this book.

You Died Anthology Review on WWAC

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My review of the Eisner Award winning comic anthology You Died: An Anthology of the Afterlife has just been published on the website Women Write About Comics. Here’s an excerpt…

Despite the success of the death positivity movement, death remains a difficult subject for many people. You Died: An Anthology of the Afterlife understands this tension and respects both the critical importance of the topic and the feelings of the reader. As befits the theme of positivity, the anthology’s tone is gentle and uplifting. With its range of unique and beautiful art styles and its entertaining yet contemplative stories, You Died celebrates a diversity of lives in its embrace of a fascinating array of afterlives.

You can read the full review (here). Although my review ended up being entirely positive, there were a few aspects of certain pieces in the anthology that didn’t initially land with me. As always, I extend my thanks to my brilliant editor, who helped me see these comics and this fantastic anthology in a different light.