May 20, 2018 Johanna Graphix / Scholastic Leave a comment

Making Friends

Kristen Gudsnuk’s Making Friends freshens up the idea of “kid gets magic way to make life changes, learns what true friendship is” with a layer of magical-girl media influences. Danielle is struggling with being separated from her friends now that she’s in seventh grade. Feeling lonely, she draws a picture of Prince Neptune (the evil-but-cool villain on the Solar Sisters cartoon she watches) in Great-Aunt Elma’s notebook, only for him to appear! He’s still got his magical powers, but more […]

May 20, 2018 Johanna Oni Press Leave a comment

Open Earth

Open Earth is the first original graphic novel from Limerence Press, the Oni Press imprint dedicated to erotic and sex education comics. As expected, it has several diverse and explicit sex scenes (which makes it problematic to read on an airplane, as I tried to). Unfortunately, the actual story isn’t as fleshed out or lovingly portrayed. As written by Sarah Mirk and illustrated by Eva Cabrera, this is about the culture clash between the generations on a space station. Rigo’s […]

May 20, 2018 Johanna NBM / Papercutz Leave a comment

Geeky Fab 5: It’s Not Rocket Science

Geeky Fab 5 has an explicit purpose — to show girls taking part in STEM activities. I support that, and this book achieves its goal, although it’s more about determination and teamwork than actual math or science. We hear about girls coding, for example, but don’t see much of the actual practice. Lucy and her sister Marina have just moved to the town of Normal. Lucy’s new school friends are Zara, Sofia, and A.J. Between them, they have a variety […]

May 20, 2018 Johanna Art Leave a comment

Preview of John Allison’s New Series for Boom!

Staring next month, Boom! Studios will launch By Night, a twelve-issue monthly series written by John Allison (Giant Days) and illustrated by Christine Larsen (Adventure Time). It’s “about coming home, discovering identity, and accidentally smashing a hole to another dimension”, and it will be available on June 13. Aspiring documentarian (and actual chemistry major) Jane has recently reunited with her former best friend Heather, amateur urban explorer. When a trip into an abandoned industrial building leads them to another world, […]

May 19, 2018 Johanna Books About Comics Leave a comment

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

The second Lumberjanes young adult novel, Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up, is now available, and like the first, Unicorn Power!, as written by Mariko Tamaki, it captures the feel of the series well for fans. (Particularly with the few but significant illustrations by Brooklyn Allen.) The camp is preparing for Galaxy Wars, a week-long contest involving a scavenger hunt, trivia contest, and obstacle course, all about the planets. That means we also get to see, in this book, Barney and […]

May 19, 2018 Johanna Movie Reviews Leave a comment

Daphne & Velma

Thanks to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, who gave me a copy of this Scooby-Doo live-action prequel, I was able to check out Daphne & Velma. This G-rated original movie runs an hour and fifteen minutes, and we found it too long at that. The plot is predictable, and the visual quality is that of a Disney kids’ sitcom. That’s the audience they’re going for, but while some kids’ movies are widely enjoyable, this unfortunately falls into the category of “dumbing […]

May 18, 2018 Johanna Movie Reviews 2 comments

Book Club: The Movie

I got a chance to see Book Club, the star-studded comedy that opens today, at a free preview screening on Tuesday. They know their target audience — 85% of the full theater was white-haired ladies, who were encouraged to tell their friends about the movie. In case you’ve been distracted by all the explode-y blockbusters, Book Club is counter-programming. It stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen as long-time friends who decide to read Fifty Shades of […]

May 16, 2018 Johanna TV News 5 comments

DC TV Shows Not Doing So Well on Fox, Two New Concepts Announced

It’s the time of year when TV networks present their show schedules for the coming year to advertisers (called the “upfronts”), so there’s been lots of news regarding what’s coming back and what’s been cancelled. While iZombie got renewed at the last minute (for what will be its final season), and all of the CW’s DC shows are safe (given their sister company status, not terribly surprising), the DC shows on Fox aren’t doing quite as well. Lucifer, which I […]

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