Monstress, Black Bolt, and my Hugo Graphic ballot

I was surprised by how much I was into volume 2 of Monstress - I had remembered feeling lukewarm about the first volume despite the gorgeous art (ranked it third in last year's voting, found it hard to get into until near the end), but, dang, either the pacing/narrative coherence has made a big leap, or just being in a part of the story where we have a much better idea what's going on has made it pretty awesome and gripping. And the art is still gorgeous. (And, you know, genuinely complicated women characters, and women in most of the important and/or awesome roles - I said about volume one that I might roll my eyes at the whole thing if a pair of men were writing and drawing the same story about male characters, but we still don't have anywhere near enough over-the-top high fantasy or fantasy/horror about women for that to feel old.)

Black Bolt: Hard Time might conceivably have been interesting if you already knew and cared about the character, but it was not a good introduction. The kind of superhero comics that's all battle effects and cheesy narration, yawn.

Space!

My Graphic ballot:( Read more... )