After much speculation and back and forth, the Gilmore Girls (GG) revival is finally underway and currently filming. Several of the WWAC GG fangurls, Draven Katayama, Ginnis Tonik, Al Rosenberg, and Kate Tanski sat down, figuratively, to discuss our hopes and dreams for the revival and even share a little flash GG fanfiction!
If It Fits: Shoes, Sex, and Eroticised Withdrawal in Okazaki Mari’s “&”
Okazaki Mari’s romance comic “&” is about romance as a connection that springs from sensual experience. Its heroine, Kaoru, works in a hospital and is attempting to build her own business as a nail technician in her own time, and at the site of each job, she has a suitor.
Comics’ Infinite Scroll: To The Rim and Beyond
The launch of Stela, a new comics app which publishes titles optimized for the downward scrolling function of smartphones, has kicked up some talk about Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. Published in 2000 as a sequel to Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics considers the kinds of innovations that McCloud believed would advance the medium. He paid particular attention to…
Prison vs Vision, B-Movies & Surprise: Comic Book Reading Diary
I went to the comic shop for the first time in a year! Things are looking good there—the spined books are shelved by genre now. In my opinion, that’s the best way to do it. What do you think? Single issues, lacking spines, and thus unshelvable, are laid out on a full wall (kids’ section…
Girls Loving Girls, In Comics? Yuri-n Luck! A Yuri Manga Primer
Content Warning: Several of the comics discussed include adult themes or adult situations. Yuri, the genre focused on female/female romantic relationships. It started in the early 70s with the publication of Shiroi Heya no Futari. These early works often ended tragically with one of the characters dying. This changed over the years, and in the…
So, Jughead’s Asexual? Let’s Talk About That
The comics corner of the internet recently flipped when it was revealed in Jughead #4, written by Chip Zdarsky and drawn by Erica Henderson, that Jughead is asexual. Two WWAC Staffers, Ginnis Tonik, who cut her comics teeth on Archie comics, and Desiree Rodriguez, a relative newbie to the Archie-verse, sat down to talk about…
Is It Safe to Review a Book Before You’ve Finished it? What I’m Reading Now: Shindo
Saso Akira has caught my attention with his older work Shindo. Saso is an award-winning mangaka and manga lecturer known for stories about uncomfortable subjects; Kodomo no Kodomo, for example, is about pre-teen pregnancy, and Toto’s World is about a child who is mute. He also produced an adaptation of the controversial film Departures/Okuribito, a story about undertaking. Shindo is a manga…
Taboo Connection and Comics as Relics: The Staring Contest, Issue #1
When desirous of a means of getting insight into a person’s mindset and where they are any given point in time, I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to go through their journal. The taboo nature of going through someone’s recounting of their day and their innermost thoughts and desires relative to it. The only electronic text…
Short & Sweet, All-Manga Edition: Barakamon, My Hero Academia, and More!
Barakamon, Volume #5 Satsuki Yoshino (mangaka); Krista Shipley & Karie Shipley (translation); Lys Blakeslee (lettering) Yen Press, June 2015 Disclaimer: A review copy was provided by Yen Press. Volume 5 of Barakamon is just as full of childhood hijinks and warm feelings as earlier volumes. City calligrapher Seishuu Handa has by now more-or-less fully adapted…
Feminism and Realism in John Allison’s Giant Days
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…
Zine Review: The Gaysi Zine, Issue 04
The Gaysi Zine: Issue 04 Editor In Chief: Priya Gangwani Art Director: Sreejita Biswas Contributors: Karishma Dorai, Soumya Menon, Pratap Chalke, Nandini Moitra, Upasana Agarwal, Amruta Patil, Sajid Wajid Shaikh, Rachna Ravi, Ankita Ghosh, Kruttika Susarla, Karishma Dorai, Anushka Jhadav, Ojoswi, Sakshi Juneja,Amirkhan Pathan, Harshit Vishwakarma, Solo, Vivek Nag, Siddhi Surte, Vivek Tejuja, Prabha Mallya,…
Starting Points: 4 Webcomics (Written by Women) You Should Check Out
I know you’re in a rush. But—looking for some reading material? How about a space opera military science fiction comic? Or two characters on a road trip from one coast of the U.S. to the other, dealing with adventure, sexuality, political intrigue, pie baking, and more? Allow me to introduce you to some of the…