What We’re Reading this Week – (special Thursday Update #2) The Plain Janes
Posted in Comics by MichaelBy Michael Climek
[Half of the Foot2Mouth team lives in NYC. That equals roughly 2 hours of Subway time day traveling to and from work. This time is spent reading. What are we reading you say? Trade Paper Backs or normal Comic Books. Thus in this feature we will try to give you a quick review of any TPB we’ve just finished in our travels. They will also not necessarily be things that just came out, but will be whatever we happened to pick up out of our massive collection this week, we are willing to re-read trades after all. Enjoy.]
Flashback to the NYC Comic Con in Feb. and Samantha and I were sitting in on the Wildstorm-Minx-CMX panel and Samantha strikes up a conversation with the woman sitting next to us cause this woman has on, as only Samantha could put it, ‘really awesome shoes’. When the panel starts this same woman then realizes she’s supposed to be talking at the panel so she walks up and sits at the panelists table. This was Cecil Castellucci. I wasn’t familiar with her yet, but she is building a name for herself and doing a damn fine job at it, she does lots of stuff, check out her website. Novelist, film director, poet, and now comic book writer, that’s quite a bit. And she wrote a comic book for DC’s new Minx line called The Plain Janes. You’ll note on that Amazon page that Cecil has also started a small Blog on Amazon to further publicize her stuff. We’ve never heard of such a thing, but must look into it.
DC’s new Minx line is intended to target teenage or tween girls with Manga sized books NOT containing super heroes. (It’s okay if you’re not comfortable with the name ‘Minx’ some people weren’t) In fact if you didn’t already know it, you might not realize at all that the books are owned by DC. And that’s okay.
Despite what you may think we here at Foot2Mouth fully support adding more female creators and readership to this industry. We here at Foot2Mouth love comics as an art-form, we are not any less legitimate because it just so happens that we particularly like comics featuring people in tights and capes. We read non-capes books too dang-it. And with all the rampant objectification of women and down right embarrassing things happening in comic books lately, we thought today was the day to finally buy Cecil’s book and give it a shot. And it’s a quick read for us, so we polished it off on the subway ride home today.
It’s a solid pre-teen read. The pacing is under control, the art and storytelling is concise and relevant. Though I know that this 25 year old male capes reader may not be able to evaluate it from a tween female perspective, know that I do have a 12 year old sister and have worked with kids this age before, so I have a vague window in that world and mindset.
Though I was a bit uncomfortable with how stereotypical the ‘smarty’ and ‘drama-nerd’ girls were painted, and I was never sure why everyone’s name was Jane, this is still an excellent book that blends believable un-objectified young female characters with modern complex problems and deals with these things in a way that will instill hope, and confidence in the reader.
If you care about comics at all, the art form not just the capes, you should pick this book up. This Minx line is a noble experiment to bridge the gap between Manga and Non-Manga readers. And after you’ve read it and enjoyed it, give this book to a young girl like I’m going to give this book to my little sister. The world will be a way more awesome place if you do.
You see, some capes readers are trying to actively buy things to make up for the guilt of someone (probably a dude) having green lighted that embarrassing statue.