If you thought Kate Beaton’s The Princess and the Pony was cute but too short (as just one volume of a children’s book), then Mega Princess is the perfect miniseries for you! It’ll run five issues, which means I have hope for plenty of twists and then an actual conclusion. Written by Kelly Thompson (Jem and the Holograms) and illustrated by Brianne Drouhard, it’s the story of ten-year-old Princess Maxine. Her fairy godmother has given her all the powers of […]

Although well into the series, which launched two-and-a-half years ago, this issue keeps its eye on several key features that make Lumberjanes so appealing. Issue #31 is written by Shannon Watters & Kat Leyh and drawn by Carey Pietsch. First, there’s the teamwork. The girls are facing off against a giant bird with medusa-like powers to turn anyone who sees it into stone, accompanied by Diane, a teen goddess exiled from Olympus, and Ligo, a Gorgon. They have to work […]

Out this coming Wednesday is the latest issue of Giant Days, the college series by John Allison (writing) and Max Sarin (art). It’s the end of the first year of school, and as storylines wrap up, the girls are facing the prospect of change. There’s a scandal with someone selling papers to students and the question of whether their falling-down dorm will survive another year. As always, the appeal of the series to me is how expressive the characters are, […]

Giant Days #16 covers several key moments of college life. Daisy is volunteering as a campus tour guide. Susan is getting over a breakup by jumping into dating again — in hardcore fashion, with three in one day. And Esther is running low on money and contemplating selling off some of her goth wardrobe to raise funds. Or maybe getting a job. As told by John Allison and drawn by Max Sarin, these incidents either bring back fond memories of […]

After battling dinosaurs, horned blizzard wolves, fighting mermaids, pirate selkies, hallucinatory flowers, and cake decorating, it’s become clear that anything, no matter how exaggerated or imaginative, is fair game for the Lumberjanes to encounter and eventually win over. This newest storyline, though, may have gone just a bit too far in silliness for my taste. Shannon Watters and Kat Leyh write a story about magic kittens and an earlier generation of Lumberjanes, come for a camp reunion, kidnapped by a […]

Some readers were concerned about the actions of girl detective Goldie Vance in the first issue. Goldie “borrows” a car in the course of an investigation, and there was consternation over the lack of consequences for her. Well, this is the time to remember that the story is four issues long, since this is the issue where the pigeons come home to roost for Goldie, with repercussions that extend beyond her to her father. His boss, the hotel owner, has […]

John Allison, best known as the webcartoonist of Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery (also available in a series of books from Oni Press), is now writing Giant Days, a print comic from Boom! Box. (You can find out more about his various projects at his website.) Issue #15 is out this Wednesday, June 1, and since they all contain satisfyingly complete stories (although with continuing events tracing the passage of the school year), you can start with it. Or […]

I’m thrilled we’ve reached a time when that classic of YA literature, the girl detective, can successfully come to comics. Hope Larson (Mercury, A Wrinkle in Time) writes and Brittney Williams (Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat!) draws the story of Goldie Vance, a young woman solving mysteries at the Florida resort hotel her father manages. It’s a four-issue miniseries with the same appeal as Boom!’s Lumberjanes (and they know it, since they included preview pages from the upcoming Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy crossover […]