Amongst the barrage of “best of” comics lists that closed out 2015, I was delighted to see John Allison’s Giant Days pop up in multiple places. The comic follows three friends—Esther De Groot, Susan Ptolemy, and Daisy Wooton—as they navigate their emotionally and academically tumultuous first year of university (a.k.a. college, for the Americans like…
Looking at Men With No Clothes On: The Goddamned
A bit later I’ll talk about racial coding. But first: something pleasant (and NSFW).
Getting a Feminist Makeover: Red Sonja, Gail Simone, and Chainmail Bikinis, Pt. 1
Gail Simone’s run on Red Sonja has been a huge boon to the character. Simone has changed the character’s origins, tweaked some of her personality (or more accurately, “enhanced”), made her canonically bisexual, and worked with artists who are willing to depict Red Sonja as the powerful warrior woman and complex character that she should be. Issue 18 will…
Game of Thrones: Cersei’s Walk of Shame
Cersei Lannister deserved it. That was the crux of my friend’s argument. After all, this was the woman responsible for Ned Stark’s death; for the death of King Robert Baratheon. She has tortured and mistreated any number of characters. She is the one who appointed the High Sparrow to the position of High Septon and reinstated…
Stay Quiet: The Staged Body of Phantom Pain’s Sniper
Spoilers, alright? Quiet is the single woman combatant in the list of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain‘s primary characters. Men outnumber women nine to one in this list, at time of writing, if personality-imprinted AIs count as people (nine to three if not). Other than Paz, the tiny blonde latina beauty who was…
Yes, There’s Rape in Lobo #9
(Content Warning: This article contains discussion of rape) The warning-free preview of Lobo #9, written by Frank J. Barbiere and Cullen Bunn, art by Szymon Kudranski and Cliff Richards, and colors by Blond, opens with villain Countess Fabria Odessa taking control of Lobo via mechanical spiders. She has him spread eagled on a bed, unable to fight back, and she straddles…
Sequential Sartorial: Narrative Chaos! How to Redesign a Character
I promised to be positive in this series so here’s a new spin on that: a how-to, some advice, a template to run with. Why complain about weak redesigns if you don’t give suggestions on how to be better? But I’m poison-flavoured and sour, like my favourite drink, so let’s sneak in a little evil…
Outlander’s Top Ten Awesome Feminist Moments
by Zoe Gray and Angel Cruz After working as a British army nurse in WWII, Claire Randall took a trip to Scotland with her husband Frank in order to reconnect and discover their family history. Unfortunately, Claire got a little more history than she bargained for when she touched a group of magical standing stones and…