This book has some pretty strong themes of homophobia and transphobia, but they are handled in possibly the most sensitive way I have ever seen in a comic. The ultimate message of the book is one of joyful self-acceptance and of a family which has been divided for many years by fear and prejudice being healing and reunited. The reason I want to state these facts at the very top of my review is that I almost put the book down after about 40 pages, feeling unsure if I would end up enjoying it. It is very, very worth it to read through the slightly rough opening to the beautiful story it unfolds into.

The lead character, Amanda, is a baseball-loving, church-going high school senior at the local Catholic high school. She has two best friends who couldn't be more different: sexually active, confident, bad-girl Cat and law-abiding Laura. When Amanda overhears a furtive phone call made by her father that seems to suggest he's having an affair, Amanda tells them both. But the family drama is much older, bigger, and stranger than she could ever have predicted. When she gets a letter from an stranger with a photo of a lost relative and an inheritance check for $30,000, she starts to investigate. On the way she uncovers family lies and personal truths which change her life forever- and for the better. The art is absolutely gorgeous, done in traditional inks with light washes. This story is set in 2004, and I appreciated the "historical details"- flip phones, AIM chat, Bush/Cheney signs, etc. Very well done, and highly recommended.

I think it's impossible to overstate how much I LOVE the Check Please series, which I have been reading online as a webcomic since late 2015. This book covers Eric Bittle's junior year at Samwell and his growing relationship with former-teammate-turned-pro-hockey-player Jack Zimmerman. The way this story handles coming out to friends and family, with the threat of media scrutiny, is just so well done. The art gets better and better with each chapter. I hadn't wait to see what Year Four has in store for these two, and all of their friends. Ngozi Ukazu is really a master storyteller, a totally unique talent.

This is such a strange book, but after three reads it does mostly hold up. The main weird thing is that it's very hard to place what age group this book was written for. It's barely 100 pages long, and short pages at that, making it the length of an easy reader. But the main characters are young adults dealing with love, rejection, bad hookups, and heartbreak. There are mentions of drug abuse and of the growing severity of the AIDS crisis (the book was published in 1989). I first read it at age 12 or 13 and absolutely fell in love with with its rich dreamy language. It paints a Los Angeles that is built out of glitter, leather, fake feathers, and old Hollywood glamour. It felt like pure magic, and the matter-of-fact inclusion of queer characters and non-normative family structures made a deep impression. I still love all those things, but now I also wince at the frequent cultural stereotypes that pop up. This book contains a white character named Cherokee, a Native character named Coyote, a Jamaican man named Valentine Jah-Love and a Chinese-American woman named Ping Chong. Do we give it a pass because the other lead characters are named Weetzie Bat, Dirk, Duck, and My Secret Agent Lover Man...?

I have not read this back to front, but a huge percentage of my family's go-to vegetarian dinner recipes are from this book. It's a good one!

This story opens with Allison Green, retired superhero, celebrating her 20th birthday and heading home to college after winter break. In a moment of inattention she steps in front of a bus- which severely damages the bus but does not effect her at all, since she developed powers of super strength and invulnerability at puberty. She is one of many teens world wide gifted or cursed with biodynamism, the sudden unexplained onset of powers of various usefulness (think X-men). She and three others formed a crime-fighting team called The Guardians and skipped high school to take down a handful of villains and save the world a few times. It was only when Allison faced down her greatest nemesis, the mind-reading, hyper-intelligent Menace and talked to him that she realized how very little she really knew about the world. She unmasked herself and went back to school to focus on problems that are harder to beat with a punch in the face: poverty, inequality, the energy crisis, domestic violence, and global peace. This is one of the smartest, most nuanced and thought provoking superhero series I've ever read. It's also one of artist Molly Ostertag's earliest published works. Compared to her current work, the art is rough, especially right at the beginning. But it's a kick to see her work develop throughout the story, which was originally posted online as a webcomic (and is still available to read for free at https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com).

Everything is pushed to a higher level in the second volume of this fantastic series: the stakes are more lethal! The powers are stronger! The art is in full color! Allison is concerned when she hears news of a serial killer beginning to operate in her area. The strange thing is that every victim of the killer is someone who was accused of rape or sexual assault, but who got off easy from the justice system. Allison heads back to the home-base of her old superhero team, The Guardians, to find one former teammate has ghosted, one is actively moving out to go start a nonprofit organization, and the last is having an identity crisis. Back on her college campus, Allison discovers the super-smart biodynamic engineer Lisa Bradley aka Paladin has been hired as a professor and is in the middle of constructing her new lab. Allison tries to get over her long-running crush on the former supervillain Menace and start dating, track down the mysterious serial killer, develop an independent study project, explore a surprising new power, and deal with a family health crisis. I am completely hooked on this series, some of the best superhero stuff I have ever read. I probably won't be able to wait for the next book to come out in print but will instead dive into the following chapters online at https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com. I love seeing Molly Ostertag's art develop into it's current style over the course of this satisfying installment.