I was so focused on my beautiful child’s birthday in April that I didn’t realize it was the sixth month of WWACommendations’ revival, bringing us now, in June, to seven months of comic recommendations! (We took a break in May; sometimes you need rest and it’s important to take it!) I love this l’il roundtable series and will always be grateful to Draven for starting it. Our contributors somehow sensed that this was a sweet little moment and targeted me specifically with their recommendations. Carrie surprised me by sharing her love for Woman World, a comic I deeply adore and recommended to a friend who promptly started buying it for others, Paulina is rereading Inuyasha which was my first bing teen fandom, Masha read Boys Run the Riot which I admired for its complex relationships and examination of fluid identity with Wing, the youtuber, and I just want to read everything else everyone is recommending! If you’ve read and loved something thanks to a WWACommendations I’d love to hear about it, but regardless I, personally, appreciate this targeted attack on my to-be-read list.
Emily Lauer: I just read Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam, by Thien Pham. It comes out June 20th and I think I’m already ready to declare it my favorite graphic memoir of the year. Pham tells the story of his refugee family’s journey through the foods he remembers from each time in his life: a rice ball on a tiny boat beset by pirates, the dish his mother learned to make and sell in a refugee camp, Salisbury steak in their early grueling days in the United States, and pastries from establishing roots as small business owners. In each section, his mother’s financial savvy and resourcefulness protect the family, and in each section his friends and community step up for each other.
Finally he concludes with a section in the present day, when he has a community of cartoonists who encourage him to engage to a greater extent in American life. His art and storytelling are impeccably paced, with wordless panels conveying a lot of emotion and word bubbles conveying language barriers in various directions. From the rice ball he remembers eating on the refugee boat, to the complicated traditional dish his mother learned to make in the camp, to the various American foods he was introduced to in the US, Pham’s experiences in Family Style fill all the reader’s senses. I cried and was happy about it.
FAMILY STYLE is a moving YA graphic memoir about a Vietnamese immigrant boy's search for belonging in America.
Enter for a chance to win a copy today: https://t.co/wlKtL0dz6f pic.twitter.com/mgaChrUHNx
— First Second Books (@01FirstSecond) May 17, 2023
Carrie McClain: Another reread from before the pandemic here: I vaguely remember reading Woman World on WEBTOON eons ago, and wanted to reread. I then bought the graphic novel, with comics adapted from the webcomic, and settled in to relive the delightful yet dark humor of a bunch of women in a post apocalyptic future where men are extinct and the survival of humanity is at stake–supposedly. I often joke that I love reading and consuming media set in apocalyptic settings but I hate that I am currently living in one. Woman World is placed in such a setting and yet doesn’t contain all the dangers and great traumas girls and women face in the other media I find myself consuming. Gone are the fears of expecting women and femme characters to be assaulted for plot and instead readers can be delighted with the adorable little girl who thinks Paul Blart: Mall Cop is one of the best remaining artifacts of man.
Woman World is a very silly and fun read with enough commentary on how freeing it is to live when gender is not heavily policed in this brand new world, and how underboobs can be at ease, bothering no one. There’s puns, an endearing love story developing throughout and lots of humorous insight on beauty standards of the past that get dissected by the women in this particular colony. Most of the artwork functions on the minimalist side with certain pages and panels bursting with more detail for hilarious effect, like when two young girls find a (terrifying) tooth whitening ad in an old magazine of a woman with a huge, exaggerated smile.
The graphic novel is a perfect introduction to Aminder Dhaliwal as a creative and now I’m onto her next book, Cyclopedia Exotica, once serialized on Instagram. I adore Woman World. It is one of those comics that is a joy to come back to again and again. How often do you find comics where women rule the world, queer love is never looked down upon and wholesome encounters meet every character? Catch me rereading once again and forward my mail to the settlement of Beyonce thighs!
At @DandQ #sdcc #1629 I picked up Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal – an incredibly hilarious semidark/semi-surreal tale of a world where men are just a distant memory & women rally under the flag of Beyoncé’s Thighs pic.twitter.com/1jbnUXNcTh
— Deb Aoki (@debaoki) July 19, 2018
Kathryn Hemmann: I was recently surprised by how much fun I had reading the Seven Seas translation of Until I Meet My Husband, a collection of short autobiographical essays by Ryousuke Nanasaki, an activist who established LGBT Community Edogawa in 2015 and a wedding planning company called Juerias LGBT Wedding in 2016. Nanasaki unpacks his motivations for becoming an activist toward the end of the book, but the majority of his essays are humorous stories about life and love. As Nanasaki explains in the final chapter, “In Place of an Afterword,” he wants readers to understand the “raw, uncut truth” of queer identity, which is that gay people experience happiness and make mistakes like everyone else.
As a result of Nanasaki’s honesty, the essays in Until I Meet My Husband are immensely entertaining and compulsively readable. Nanasaki leans hard into drama, but he’s so funny and good-natured that you can’t help but support him through his misadventures. Visual novel veteran Molly Lee’s translation is pitch perfect, conveying the confidence and enthusiasm of Nanasaki’s voice in colloquial English that’s a pleasure to read. Along with the original essay collection, Seven Seas has also released its manga adaptation, which features dreamy artwork by the social media BL manga superstar Yoshi Tsukizuki.
UNTIL I MEET MY HUSBAND (ESSAY NOVEL) | Ryousuke Nanasaki | gay activist Ryousuke Nanasaki reflects on his journey to marriage in the first religiously recognized same-sex wedding in Japanese history (manga also from Seven Seas) | $14.99 | June 21, 2022https://t.co/AGoSuoV6SI pic.twitter.com/Ls2Qiwmseu
— Seven Seas Entertainment (@gomanga) June 1, 2022
Paulina Przystupa: I decided to finish all those manga I didn’t have the discipline for when I was a kid and so I have been slowly churning through a huge backlog of Queen Rumiko Takahashi’s works. Also spoilers but some of these series are older than some of our readers (and me) so…not that sorry? I finished Ranma ½ a few months ago, which has some hilarious moments, and others that have aged poorly. The ending of the series was not quite what I wanted and the universe owes Akane more character development and some training montages but I’m glad I got through it!
Now I have 56 volumes of Inuyasha to read. Thankfully, I am on volume 42, so close to the end but there are so many things happening in it. One thing I love about reading these series back-to-back is seeing Takahashi switch from the infinite sight gags of Ranma to the luscious feudal illustrations of Inuyasha. Beyond that, she illustrates some truly unsettling shit between demons and mummies and just some very fucked up scenes that, although I see the style connections between the two works because they both look like Takahashi’s work, the pivot in storytelling is truly amazing. By volume 42, there are, like, infinite incarnations of Naraku and they are all vying for supremacy. IDK who to root for in that but I do know I did not expect to love Kagura as much as I do by this point. She goes from generic baddie to a woman yearning for freedom who knows she won’t get it in the way that she wants. I did not expect anything in Inuyasha to move me like Kagura’s story arc has. Much tears. Other folks have definitely rec’d Takahashi’s work before and it’s been nourishing to go back and finish up these stories that were such a formative part of my comics experience.
Kathryn: I am always here for Inuyasha!! The anime is sometimes mocked for its endless battles (and because Inuyasha was everyone’s middle-school boyfriend), but the original manga is well-written and beautifully drawn. It’s also next-level addictive, and it’s easy to get dozens of volumes in before you’re even aware of it. Although I appreciate Ranma, I think Inuyasha has aged better, and it’s a great starting point for anyone curious about Takahashi’s work. I agree with Paulina about everything… especially Kagura. In this house we stan a problematic queen.
Twenty-five years ago today, November 13, 1996 the first chapter of Inuyasha was published and Rumiko Takahashi introduced the world to Inuyasha, Kagome and Kikyo for the first time in Shonen Sunday 1996 Vol. 50. #高橋留美子 #犬夜叉 #少年サンデー #inuyasha pic.twitter.com/d4AlfSjy2a
— Rumic World (@rumicworld1) November 13, 2021
Masha Zhdanova: Speaking of manga, I downloaded every manga app people have been talking about on Twitter this past week or so (so, Azuki, Viz, and K-manga) and just really started to get into a bunch of new series and old favorites while I figure out these apps’ quirks and how they plan to squeeze all my money out of me. I really enjoyed the Azuki exclusives Hikaru in the Light and My Dear Detective. Hikaru is about an aspiring idol in a competition TV show, and it’s very sweet but grounded about the realities of singing and dancing as a career. Less… Pandering? Than certain gacha game adaptations I have seen. My Dear Detective is about a cool lady detective in Taisho-era Ginza, Tokyo who solves crimes and gets hit on by a hot rich younger man. Good for her. It’s more episodic than Hikaru, though, so I didn’t feel compelled to read to the end as much. It was easier to pick it up and put it down after a few cases.
On K-manga, I finally started Boys Run the Riot and am trying to read it through the app’s confusing monetization machinations. Just give me the comic. Please. Apart from the app stuff, the comic is fun. My friends were right to recommend it.
On Viz, I reread How Do We Relationship? by Tamifull because it is a treasured favorite, but there’s a bunch of chapters missing that the app promises to fill in later. I just love the cute art style, the funny characters, and the many complexities of different kinds of lesbian relationships and queer friendships and all the stuff that happens when you are gay in college. It’s so good!! I don’t understand why no one ever talks about this comic!!
Making Manga: Keito Gaku on BOYS RUN THE RIOT
Watch the new video on Kodansha US Youtube channel! https://t.co/0UnLsrN1F0
Featuring @ktogak drawing the new illustrations for the upcoming volumes of #boysruntheriot pic.twitter.com/nyLdhDTHSA
— Kodansha USA 🔜 #AX23 Booth 3900 (@KodanshaManga) May 27, 2021
Kayleigh Hearn: I’m now in my second trimester of pregnancy, and with all the wonderful chaos that comes with that, I’ve fallen WAY behind on my to-read pile. But one title I’ve religiously kept up with is Lore Olympus, Rachel Smythe’s deliriously charming Webtoon soap opera about the private lives and loves of the Greek pantheon. A lot has happened since I last wrote about the series for WWAC, and with Persephone and Hades finally tying the knot, Lore Olympus has entered a spicy new era. (Sex. I’m talking about sex.)
But my favorite recent storyline is the birth of the god Dionysus. Zeus – dressed like the preppie villain of your favorite 80s movie – shows up at Persephone’s apartment, hoping she will discretely deliver the divine baby sewn into his thigh. (The Greek gods: they’re just like us!) The following sequence is hilarious and heartfelt, with the amazing visual of a very over-it Persephone wearing a clear plastic raincoat, Patrick Bateman-style, for the operation. An unconventional birth story, to be sure – but one that this mom-to-be read at the perfect time.
Lore Olympus volume 4 is coming on June 6th, 2023 and is available for pre order now. pic.twitter.com/1XmbCqMjwE
— Rachel @ Lore Olympus (@used_bandaid) May 9, 2023
Alenka Figa: I read through a bunch of zines on my shelves in preparation for Chicago Zine Fest’s impending in-person return and in that pile of zines that had been waiting a long, long time to be read was Cameraman by Sunmi. I have zero recollection of if I ordered it online from Diskette Press or got it at CAKE, but it’s only available digitally now so I feel lucky to have a very pretty l’il paper copy. Cameraman is a trans romance between Sam, a camera operator for a webseries that features various restaurants, and Aiden, a restauranteur. The comic is riso printed in mostly blue ink with a warm blue and peach cover. It’s a thoughtful story with a lot of awkward pauses that make Sam and Aiden’s first meeting feel very real. Their eventual moment of physical connection, however, is absolutely breathtaking. Sunmi’s sweet love story captures a moment of full personhood; of feeling wonderfully, utterly whole while being fully seen by another. It’s very lovely and very much worth grabbing the PDF on itch.
