Welcome to the first WWACommendations of 2024! We’ve had a bit of new year magic crop up because almost everyone is on a theme this round. We’re all reading about mythical water creatures, except for Masha, the odd girl out. (That’s a pun, it will make sense in a moment.) We’ve also all picked comics with fairly long titles, which might make this the longest WWACommendations title ever. Sorry, SEO crawlers?
It’s been a joy to restart this round table series, and I want to send an enormous amount of love and gratitude to everyone who contributes. An especially big pile goes to Draven for starting this whole thing in the first place, to Nola for creating the gorgeous banner, and to Kat for working away in the WWACommendations editorial mines. I’m excited to read oodles more comics with you all in the new year.
Emily Lauer: Plain Jane and the Mermaid by Vera Brosgol will come out in May. I’ve liked Vera Brosgol, creator of Anya’s Ghost, for a while, so I was excited to see this upcoming title from First Second. In Plain Jane and the Mermaid, we first meet Jane, a kind but not beautiful girl who lives in a big house in a seaside village. When her parents die and she learns she can’t inherit unless she’s married, she proposes to a very handsome young fisherman who loves his looks and does not enjoy fishing. Unfortunately, the beautiful beloved is seduced by a mermaid and dragged to the depths of the sea. Honestly, it could happen to anyone.
Jane sets out on a fairy tale quest to rescue him, with magical items from a village wise woman and allies she meets along the way. The fairy tale vibes and the beautiful art make Plain Jane and the Mermaid a genuinely all-ages graphic novel, with social interactions and an overall message that can resonate with kids, teens, and adults alike. Plus, I love all the characters and would happily read their continuing adventures even though the resolution is already satisfying.
Kathryn Hemman: I have another mermaid story to recommend this month! Yoko Komori’s graphic novel Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand is about an elementary school student named Tokiko who moves to a small coastal village during her parents’ divorce. Tokiko’s father and grandmother shower her with affection, and she quickly makes friends at school. Still, Tokiko likes to spend time gazing at the ocean, where she almost drowned as a young child. She believes she was saved by a mermaid, and she’s intrigued by the local Wadatsumi Festival, during which the town expresses gratitude toward the mermaids that protect its fishing industry.
One of Tokiko’s new friends, Yosuke, insists that mermaids aren’t real. But if they aren’t, what did Tokiko see in the ocean? And what’s on the other side of the abandoned tunnel the children are forbidden to enter?
Originally published in 2013, Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand is ultimately a meditation on how folklore helps humans mediate our contentious relationship with the natural world, but the mystery of mermaids and monsters is secondary to the small wonders of Tokiko’s daily life as she finds her place in her new home. Komori’s attractive but understated character designs give the reader ample room to appreciate the beauty of the setting, which is conveyed through detailed interior designs and expansive landscape art. Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand is a treasure, and I’m thrilled that Viz Media has published Komori’s work in English.
Alenka Figa: I have long meant to recommend How to Become a Dragon by eon, but I’ve dawdled because it is tricky to summarize. However, I’m out of time because it is ENDING. The epilogue is in sight and will likely be publicly readable on Webtoon when this WWACommendations is published! How to Become a Dragon is about Young, a twenty-something tutor who has always had absolute shit luck. That luck, however, is actually bad karma, resulting from his ancestor having wronged an ancient imoogi! Young would never have known this had the imoogi himself, the softhearted and somewhat gullible Bari, not shown up on his doorstep asking for help. Without Young, Bari cannot seize a second chance to ascend to the status of river dragon — and he has to beat a bunch of other unlucky imoogi to the punch.
This long-running webtoon is worth it for the gorgeous character designs and details. The clothing! The buildings! The animals and mythical beings! But it’s also a wonderful story that sucks you in with humor and cute character dynamics, then unfolds into a complex and sorrowful tale. Young isn’t the only one with fucked-up karma, and each imoogi and human is carrying trauma stemming back to incidents thousands of years old. What if your generational trauma was linked to a single, specific being? How would you confront them and interact with them? The premise of this comic is so rich, and eon has explored it so thoroughly and beautifully. Let this be your first big binge-read of the year.
Masha Zhdanova: I second both of the recs above! I don’t have a mermaid-themed rec right now, though! I thought I’d recced this before, but I searched and didn’t find it, so I’m going to talk about it now! Odd Girl Out by Morangji is one of the best school dramas I’ve ever read. Nari, the normalest girl in the world, somehow winds up being friends with the prettiest girls in her grade! It’s a pretty long webtoon about the fairly mundane problems of an average teenage girl with average hopes and dreams, but it somehow manages to have a lot of forward momentum. I regularly finish reading an update with the desire to find out what happens next.
Its length allows the comic to explore complex situations with depth and nuance, giving all sides of a conflict understandable motivations. It also lets the reader watch Nari grow from an insecure doormat to a strong and capable leader respected by her friends and peers. There’s no frustrating characterization backslides or plot cul-de-sacs, everyone’s always moving forward and behaving in ways consistent with how they’ve developed since we first met them. The art also evolves, with subtler, richer coloring and expressions developing as the artist’s skill improves. It has that good “binging a long-running slice-of-life webcomic twenty years after it launched” energy in a more condensed time frame. It’s also funny! And cute! And interesting! This story about a girl making friends is much better than the many other stories about girls making friends out there!
Carrie McClain: Masha, Odd Girl Out was such a page-turner when I first read the first few seasons of the webcomic online. Thank you for reminding me that it exists! I fell in love with the story’s emphasis on girlhood, self-esteem, and self-worth. I am game for a reread! I am also loving all the mermaid love this month! I would add that it is time that I reread The Sea in You by Jessi Sheron– the copy I pre-ordered from Iron Circus’ crowdfunding campaign came in the mail last year. Also, see our site’s interview with the creator!
Considered a contemporary fantasy retelling of The Little Mermaid, The Sea in You originally began as a webcomic. The graphic novel follows Corinth and Skylla. Corinth is a teenage girl who is lonely, insecure, and yearning for more in life. She is lured into the sea but spared and saved by a mermaid named Skylla. This aquatic creature is fanged and a lot deadlier, faster, and stronger than all the mermaid stories that Corinth has grown up with. Skylla becomes the friend that Corinth has always wanted – and needed and vice versa. Others start to take note of the new brightness in Corinth’s life, and some aren’t as happy about the new developments in their happiness and sense of agency in the world.
As much as The Sea In You is a queer love story I adore, it is also a daring story about the beauty of communication and finding those who want to understand you and not trample over you or force their opinions on you. The graphic novel presents a grand tale of the importance of friendship but also finding depth: the complexities that can be found in oneself. Come for the mermaid lore (and impressive world-building under the sea), and stay for the dazzling artwork. Come also for the twist on the mermaid fairy tale we all know — and stick around for the heartwarming yet complex story about escaping toxicity and becoming someone transformed by not just love, but a desire to change.
