Womanthology-Space #1
Womanthology – Space #1 is just what it sounds like: a collection of [five] short
comic book tales of the science-fiction flavor, produced by a cast of all-female creators!
I’m going to take a moment, here, to mention just how excited I was when I first saw this
pop up in a list of soon-to-be-released comics – it’s exactly the kind of thing I think a
beautiful, forward-thinking, boundary-busting industry (at its best, people – at its best)
like the one we all know and love should be supporting. Ogeeku.com regulars can look
back to my review of Batgirl #13 and see that women creators are represented in
mainstream comics, but the balance is definitely skewed toward the male. Is that because
men are better at writing and illustrating comics? Is it because men are more in touch
with the predominantly male market they’re striving to feed? Or is it a complete load of
bull? Let’s dig in, and find out!
It’s only fair to discuss each of the stories in Womanthology – Space #1 on its
own merit, and I intend to do just that. Unfortunately, Womanthology – Space #1 starts
out by putting its worst foot forward, courtesy of a script that barely counts as “story”
from writer Bonnie Burton, and art that… well, really unimpressive art from Jessica
Hickman. In “Waiting For Mr. Roboto,” the scene is set: we’re in a space-diner with
waitress Trixie, a purple alien who bemoans her job, whining to unsympathetic robot co-
workers about how she’d rather be swept off her feet than work for a living. Join the
club, toots! This treads the line between dialogue that is either decently relatable or way-
too-obvious, and in this reviewer’s opinion, it doesn’t tread it well… for two reasons.
Firstly, and this applies outside the realm of science fiction comics, as well: as
both a reviewer and a writer of comics, I, for one, do not consider simply transposing
your desires into the context of your character “creativity.” As writers, we’re told
to “write what you know,” but that means, at least in science fiction, not a simple re-
telling, but to re-cast life experiences in such a way as to examine them from radically
different perspectives – for example, a long-distance relationship across light-years,
where love letters take decades to reach their intended recipients. You’ll notice that, just
like the author, I’m keeping my examples “girly,” but what happens next is an insult
to everyone who paid $3.99 for Womanthology – Space #1: after Trixie complains that
she wants a super cute guy in her life, one walks right through the front door and offers
himself to her! Want to know what happens next? Nothing happens next – that’s the end
of the comic! This is the second reason that the dialogue, and, indeed, the premise and
execution of this so-called story fall so flat: a character expressing a desire, and then
having that desire met, is not a story. A story requires a character to have a problem and
solve it, growing from the experience, not to have a desire and fall ass-backwards into
having that desire met.
The male equivalent of this would be a drunken asteroid miner throwing up on his
own feet, thinking about how horny he felt, looking up, and realizing that he just puked
all over the door of a robo-whore house, at which point a robo-whore rolls over to him,
puts her Consoling-Arm-3000 around him, and offers him a freebie, lube ten cents extra.
Would the fact that the asteroid miner was previously bigoted against robotic lifeforms
help your appreciation of the story? No? Well, it doesn’t help “Waiting For Mr. Roboto,”
either. A swing and a miss, for Womanthology.
The next story in the Womanthology is “Dead Again,” written by Sandy King
Carpenter and illustrated by Tanja Wooten. Both of these ladies do a wonderful job, in
stark contrast to the previous story, with Wooten’s art an obvious stand-out for the entire
Womanthology. Her renderings are original and boldly colorful, full of characterizing
line-work and bright colors while still maintaining the gloomy feel demanded by King
Carpenter’s moody script. The story is fantastic, a tale of isolation-induced deep-space
insanity, a sci-fi trope that yields no end of fascinating tales. An un-named protagonist is
left aboard a ruined spaceship and tasked to blow it up for disposal purposes. Before he
can, he’s faced by the specter of Miranda, a deceased shipmate we’re given to understand
he had some history with. Of course, she’s not real, but the hallucination is still powerful,
and art and story come together to immerse us in the overwhelming nature of insanity in
the absence of any other consciousness’ grounding reality as she begs him not to kill
her “again.” When you’re all alone in the black, who’s to say what’s really real? Luckily,
our protagonist can tell the difference, and the act of blowing up the ship in the face of
the hallucinations works as turning point in his life, showing that he’s managed to sweat
out his frustrations at her loss and move forward in his life. An engaging sci-fi premise, a
character who comes through a tribulation we’ve all faced, his experience further tinged
by the far-future world in which he lives – an experience for us, the whole way – and a
neatly wrapped up, emotionally satisfying conclusion. The whole package, and with a
distinctly feminine lilt to it: exactly what I would’ve hoped for from Womanthology –
Space #1. Brava!
“Scaling Heaven,” a collaborative effort between Alison Ross & Stephanie Hans,
is probably my 2nd favorite comic in this Womanthology. In such a short comic, there was
a lot to critique, and a lot to like, so, just like I always do, I’m going to start with the bad
news. This is just one man’s opinion, but I’ve never been a fan of computer art. I think
I’ve read enough modern comics at this point to say fairly confidently that this is an
example of someone who can’t, or won’t, draw by hand, using tools available to them on
the computer to recreate life-like imagery. What’s my beef? I’d rather see someone
searching out the tools they need to create art, rather than searching out tools that are
easy to use, and seeing what they can manage to pull off. I’d also rather see the same
artist work out a non-lifelike style and illustrate it by hand. Here’s the deal: I know that I
can’t draw, so I don’t draw. This is like Kanye West’s over-use of auto-tune: I read a
tweet from him one day that said: “Tried to sing song, couldn’t, and realized I
don’t sing good (sic) – thank g-d for auto-tune!” When most people have that realization,
they stop singing. But not good ol’ Kanye.
Just so we’re being clear, I think much more of Hans’ art than I do of the so-
called music of Kanye West. The above tirade should be seen more as a personal opinion
regarding computerized art than a direct critique of the work of Stephanie Hans. Credit
where credit is due: every image is beautifully and compellingly composed, and supports
Alison Ross’ story masterfully, working hand-in-hand with the script to establish exactly
the vibe these two storytelling ladies wanted to convey. You know what else? Alison
Ross illustrated a beautiful comic, and I sure didn’t! Kudos to her on a job well done!
But what would a comic be without the story? Just pretty pictures – good thing,
then, that Alison Ross is directing this one, a tale about a female astronaut who hopes to
become the first woman on the moon. Set before this great task, the first 5 pages of this 6
page comic build the tension of what she’s had to go through, how much of her life she’s
had to devote, to making this dream a reality: we feel tension from her body (physical
training), from her family, from the possibility that she’ll not be chosen and loose
everything she’s worked for… and then, finally, she gets her chance! She undertakes her
mission, leaving us with a final page of beautiful outer-space artwork courtesy of the
Kanye-crushing Hans, the imagery perfectly accompanying Ross’ final sentiment: that
after everything she’s been through, after devoting her life to the achievement of this
single moment, our main character is nothing but “a speck of dust in a sunbeam.” A
perfect sci-fi moment, tying perfectly in to our theme of featuring women in science
fiction comics. Nothin’ but net!
“The Adventures of Princess Plutonia” is one more little inclusion that, if it had
been written by a man, would have been laughed out of the submissions office over at
IDW faster than you can say “RASL!” The first page is devoted to establishing that
Princess Plutonia won’t escape the dire situation she finds herself in without her “Lovely
Earthman,” a mostly-naked dude in a loincloth with one line in the entire two-page
comic. This basically reads as a gender-role-reversal experiment based on Edgar Rice
Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars novels (and/or the many comic book adaptations of
such). Unfortunately, those novels and the gender roles they present are from 1913, so
flipping that script can only bring us so “up-to-date.” Unfortunately, this falls under
much the same category as the first story did: with so little space in which to add value to
your adventurous sci-fi comic romp, more is needed than a declaration to not leave
before finding a hottie, finding a hottie, and leaving with the hottie. Who is he, and why
does he mean so much to our main character? The answer seems to revolve around his
pecs, as does our protagonist’s attention. John Carter follows in the footsteps of every
Americanized Celtic legend ever, and, in following John Carter, “Princess Plutonia” can
hardly be faulted outright. However, as with Super Mario and Legend of Zelda,
where “save the princess” storylines are the unimaginative default, everyone is in on the
joke, and both creators and their adoring public know that the story is not where we find
these games’ redeeming traits and strongpoints. For Mario and Zelda games, the strength
is in the gameplay, with the story almost purposely vacuous in order to keep the attention
where it belongs: on what we can do with the latest iteration of a beloved gaming
franchise. For “Princess Plutonia,” I’m not sure where the focus is supposed to be, and
that definitely hurts it as an overall package. Art: classic, high-quality.
Stacie Ponder’s “Spacegirls” closes out this first Womanthology – Space just the
same way “Mr. Roboto” opened it: poorly. Ponder is another example of the Kanye-
effect: if you can’t do something well, don’t take peoples’ money for it. This is the
opposite of the Joker’s advice, of course, to never do anything for free if you do it well.
Whatever twisted interpretation of Heath’s parting words Ponder seems to have fixated
on, I wish she hadn’t – “Spacegirls” is a creator’s fantasy that would’ve been better
served remaining just that: fantasy. The comic is rendered in stick-figure art. I’m not just
being a jerk – that’s actually how it’s drawn. The shots from outside the spaceship are the
best part of this little two-pager, whereas inside, we have a cute-haired stick-figure
captain guy, running around a spaceship crewed entirely by presumably-cute stick-figure
spacegirls. After admonishing one of them against non-existent anti-fraternizing ship-
board regulation, the captain makes out with her, before being interrupted by a report
from the bridge: sensors have picked up a giant cat in space, and it soon shoots at them.
The comic ends before the shot connects. Cats suck. Stick figure art sucks (most of us
know not to publish it). Short comics with no story suck. Sorry, “Spacegirls.”
At the beginning of this review, I promised to dig into the question of why women
are disproportionately underrepresented in the comic book industry. As someone who
laughs in the face of the notion of any sentient being be treated differently from any other
sentient being, be they divided by lines of sex, race, or even alien species, I had hoped
that Womanthology – Space #1 would provide the ammunition for a scathing indictment
of the sexist practices of the male-dominated comic book industry, and support a
resultantly resounding call to arms for female creators to step to the forefront. Upon first
reading it, I was devastated by a perceived lack of quality issuing from female creators,
but, having read it for a third and fourth time in writing this review, I’ve changed my tune
again.
Overall, I think that Womanthology represents a turning point, an upswing, in
the comparatively-freshly-begun history of women contributing to the art form that is
comics. In every way, the stories in Womanthology – Space #1 seem to reflect a cross-
section of the comics industry in its nascence, further evidenced by the fact that lots
of these stories are simply transpositions of their creators’ personal fantasies onto the
printed page. This inexperience, and the resultant, lower quality of some of the stories,
suggest that there isn’t enough of a pool of sufficiently talented female creators to draw
from who are interested in turning their talents in the direction of creating science fiction
comics in the first place. That doesn’t make Womanthology – Space #1 “bad,” it makes
it… “disappointing.”
In conclusion, it’s only by supporting comics just like Womanthology – Space #1
that we’ll ensure the continuing cycle of increasing numbers of female creators writing
more and more books to attract more and more female readers, who will, themselves,
hopefully become inspired to be an even larger pool of female creators. Only this
geologically-slow cycle will supply us with the female comic book talent we all know we
deserve, and with the equal recognition that we all know women deserve in this field, as,
at their best, they do in all fields.
