“Let’s talk the positives that I’m not going to argue against.
Cool to have a likable, funny female protagonist. Who is also black. Points awarded. I think the character is heroic and also a screw-up. She doesn’t have to be perfect, which is nice.
Okay. Let’s talk about a couple other things.
There are ways in which the story is cool. A princess in a tower who escapes and heads off to rescue her similarly-trapped sisters. I’m into that.
Buuuut can we get to rescuing the sisters? Can we have some action?
The story kind of meanders around, and I think it’s because we have to make sure and get the point across: Women in stories are treated like shit. We bumble through a battle with two dum-dum guard types, and we burn down a blacksmith store, but that’s most of the action right there.
I wanna see this lady fight a Minotaur! Or a cyclops or some shit!
And I don’t really need dialog that goes:
Young Armor Maker: “So, what you’re saying is, just because a warrior is a woman doesn’t mean they have to wear a chain mail bikini? Like, they could wear…real armor?”
or
Boy: “Couldn’t a woman rule?”
King Jerk: “It is not a woman’s place to rule, but to be ruled.”
Speaking of this instance, a note:
The boy in question is the male twin of our protagonist. He cries, likes poetry and sucks at swordfighting. While I like the female empowerment of the book, I think the straight-up swapping of typical male/female roles between twin male and female characters is kinda…well, lazy. Just the way I like a female character who is a blend of traditional and non-traditional ideas of feminism (she can kick ass AND enjoy, I don’t know, scrapbooking) I wouldn’t mind seeing a more nuanced understanding of masculinity. A dude who cries doesn’t necessarily suck at swordfighting, right? It feels like we just did a genitalia swap and called it a day, and that doesn’t strike me as being terribly progressive. We just imprint a lady with dude stuff and a dude with lady stuff, and that to me just kind of reinforces the idea of what’s male and what’s female. A more blended approach would read as better to me.
Anyway, the message-y portion of the book is pretty ham-fisted, and ham is my least favorite of meats. I could go for getting this stuff a little more piecemeal while we’re also DOING stuff.
That’s the thing. Sometimes I’m disappointed by female-led comic books, and almost always that disappointment comes in that I feel like the actual stuff that’s happening just doesn’t amount to much. When we talk about a lady doing everything a dude can do but backwards and in heels, the hero, the person of interest, is the person dancing that dance, not the person who points out the difficulty of said backwards, inappropriately-shod dance. There’s a place for this book, but my dream book is a book where the princess rescues herself and goes and rescues her sisters and STUFF HAPPENS.
I’m glad that comics go out of their way to make the point about female empowerment and how shittily female characters have been treated. And I’m so super ready for some female characters to start throwing punches and swinging swords already, for them to wear normal shit, and for them to act and let the larger, outside world of comicdom talk about what a breath of fresh air that is.
Let me say it a lot more concisely. This book asks the question, Why can’t a princess save herself and other princesses instead of waiting for a man? I’m reading more comics where women question the status quo, and that I like. It’s an awesome premise and a great question.
But what I really want is the answer to that question. The part where we do the stuff.
My heroes, male and female, aren’t the ones that question the status quo. They’re the ones who make apparent and undeniable how stupid it is to say “This or that person can’t possibly kick ass” because THEY KICK SO MUCH ASS!!!!!!
You know, the first volume of a comic gets somewhat of a pass. It’s like the pilot episode. They have to set shit up, and I get that. But my simple hope for this comic is that someone starts doing things pretty damn soon.
Oh, one other thing on a totally different topic…
Does everything in the realm of fantasy have to include:
+Medieval setting
+Swords
+Dragons
+Dwarves
+Kings
?
I went to my old high school pal, Cliff’s Notes, for an answer on what fantasy is:
“Fantasy fiction is a genre of writing in which the plot could not happen in real life (as we know it, at least).”
Sooo that doesn’t really prescribe, well, anything.
It’s not entirely this book’s fault. In fact, I think it’s mostly the movie industry’s fault. Every movie in the realm of fantasy seems to be guys with swords and boots running at each other across a field.
The stronger points of this book are the points in which the book kind of mocks the typical fantasy tropes. But that makes the occasional reliance on them all more prominent. Gentle dragon, plucky dwarf with mystical strength, swords out the ass.
I mean, are we getting orcs soon? How is it that people are just cool using orcs? Who invented orcs and why isn’t that person more litigious? Where are the War Mummies and the enormous Battle Snails?
I’m just saying, it’s a little disheartening that so many fantasy books use the same things when the entire world of possibility is wide the hell open.
Not really a slam on this book, but a question that needs to be asked and considered for the health and relevance of the fantasy genre.”