Monstress Vol 1

Author: Marjorie Liu                 Artist: Sana Takeda            

Description:

Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900's Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steampunk, MONSTRESS tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both.

Review:

Entertainment Weekly praised this series as "one of Image Comics' most imaginative and daring new series" and dubbed it the "Best New Original Series" in their year-end "Best Comics of 2015" list.I am reading this in 2019, the #metoo years where drawings of super booby women who switch from ugly to beautiful, who have ancient monsters living in them, or wear large grotesque mouthpieces that make me feel like they are being silenced just seems disturbing to me. Should I be more disturbed or less disturbed that this comes from a female artist of color?

I just donʻt know how I feel. There are so many disturbing elements and I donʻt know if they are disturbing because I hate that I actually got drawn in, or are the elements disturbing because I feel like this is a strange mix of misogeny and feminism? I took a month to read 200 pages of comic book. That just means I had to keep putting it down and picking it up, but the feeling of both ick and wonder never went away. At the end, I don't know if I liked this enough to recommend it, but I do have volume 2 ready to go. I just have to wait until the creeps go away.