Unfortunately, we’ve run into some technical issues with our membership page, and nominations have not gone through. If you’d like to sign up for a membership or nominate potential Board members, please email info@girl-wonder.org. Membership fees will be waived during this process. If you’ve already paid your $5 membership, please let us know so that we can check to see if the payment’s gone through and refund it.

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Gworg is an incorporated non-profit feminist organization dedicated to fostering an attentive, empowered comics fan community, to encouraging respect and high-quality character depiction, and to assisting the professional development of women working in the field of comics. Anyone who supports these aims is eligible to become a member, and all members are able to vote, stand for office, and nominate others to the Board.

Becoming a Director is an excellent opportunity to support and direct the progress of Girl-Wonder.org! Moreover, since Gworg is a registered non-profit organization, this also makes a great entry of volunteer work on your resume.

We will be accepting new members and Board nominations from Monday, January 9th through Monday, January 30th. Elections will be announced on Monday, February 6th. Members will then have until Monday, February 13th to vote for this year’s Gworg Board of Directors.

Click here to learn more about becoming a member and/or joining the Board!

What separates this book from the dozens of other teen superhero books that have passed through comic shop shelves over the years? The answer is Christos Gage, a writer who has rapidly risen to become one of Marvel’s brightest stars. Gage’s work deals with consequences at a level that few other superhero writers are willing to tackle. No canon, no matter how old, is irrelevant for Gage. He expertly weaves the past and the present (without, it should be noted, relying on fans’ assumed knowledge of past stories) to illustrate the ways that past experiences and actions shape the lives and futures of all human beings. The Avengers Academy faculty includes characters like Hank Pym and Pietro Maximoff, characters who have made their fair share of mistakes and want to pass along the lessons they’ve learned to the next generation. The lives of superheroes are difficult and messy, and this book addresses that fact with a rare honesty.

Yet the book is far from glum and gloomy. Ultimately Avengers Academy is a story of hope, of adults trying to help kids and kids trying to help themselves and each other. The kids have their problems, but they’re still very much kids – they even have a prom! – and their interpersonal relationships are bright spots amid the stresses of battle. They have successes to match their failures, and the book is frequently quite funny. I rarely finish an issue without a smile on my face.

For those whose interest has been piqued, I highly recommend picking up all the trade paperbacks of the series so far. But for those looking to dip their toes in, the book’s recent status quo change – moving the school to the old West Coast Avengers headquarters and adding new characters – is a perfect jumping-on point. Pick up last month’s issue 21 and see what the fuss is all about.

Violence: This is a superhero comic, so there’s plenty of fighting of all kinds, including violence that ends in death (though not for our protagonists). Given the premise, all of the characters also have some kind of torture in their backstories. But violence in this book is rarely graphic or gory.

Sexualized Violence: There are references to the past sexualized attack on faculty member Tigra (which happened in another book) and one of the male characters is implied to have been molested as a child. Sexualized violence is never graphic or cast in a positive light, however.

Gender: Half of the original team was female, and more recently two more regular female students have been added, in addition to a number of part-time students (including former solo title stars Spider-Girl, the Savage She-Hulk, and X-23). The girls come from a variety of backgrounds and have distinct personalities, and gendered plots and dialogue are extremely rare. The girls are both as heroic and as screwed-up as their male counterparts.

The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Since the gender-balanced cast spends most of its conversations talking to each other about their powers, fights, and education, I doubt any issue has failed to pass the test, though I don’t have specific figures.

Minorities: From its inception, this book has made a conscious attempt to include diversity in its cast. Reptil is Latino, Hazmat is half-white/half-Japanese-American, and Mettle in flashbacks appears to be at least half Native Hawaiian (he’s also half-Jewish). The new cast includes a white queer character (Julie Power) and a Puerto Rican female character (the new White Tiger, taking up the mantle from her brother, Hector Ayala), and recent writer comments have hinted that one of the original team may be gay. The teaching staff, relying as it does on older characters, is totally white and straight (and mostly male), but that could change at any point as the cast shifts. In addition, the new part-time students come from a variety of backgrounds.

Parents May Wish to Be Aware: I would rate this book at least PG-13; it is definitely aimed at teens and adults, and the level of violence and implied sexuality is probably too high for younger kids. But compared to some superhero comics, this book tends to be less graphic and grim-and-gritty; the costumes and art are not sexualized and there is a strong moral center to the story. Teenagers should be fine.

Review by Jennifer Margret Smith

Having never actually read any comics with Thor in them, my perception of the character was based on Norse mythology, which is why about half an hour into the movie, I leaned towards my friend – a lifelong Marvel fan – and whispered, “You never told me Thor was for girls!” And I was only being a little bit facetious. After all, this is a movie about a (very, very, very) handsome prince with long flowing hair who struggles through adversity in order to earn his birthright and the love of his life. It’s a Disney movie with more punching and fire-spewing Scandanavian robots! Honestly, if a cartoon bluebird had perched on Thor’s finger while he was galloping across that rainbow bridge on his pretty white horse and all three of them had burst into song, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

Or, to put it another way, this is the only superhero movie I can think of that spends any time on the female gaze (lingering shots of George Clooney’s Bat-nipples don’t count). Look, obviously I don’t think men and women are genetically predisposed to like certain things – this is a website about women and superhero comics, after all. But Thor, besides being a funny, touching, well-acted epic with absolutely gorgeous cinematography, is chock-full of things women are socialized to appreciate: a climax that’s as emotionally wrought as it is physically exhilarating. Character growth that’s about learning to be peaceful and thoughtful and responsible instead of warlike and arrogant. Family. Romance. Interconnectivity. Chris Hemsworth’s bare torso and twinkly blue eyes. (Sigh!)

Plus, in a genre where women tend to revolve around the central hero like helpless satellites with great hair, the women of Thor are wonderfully refreshing. Jane Foster is a scientist first and foremost; sure, Thor’s dreamy and all, but she’s mainly focused on retrieving her research, which is confiscated by SHIELD early on. Darcy gets all the best lines, and hell, just the fact that the comic relief character/assistant scientist is female is astonishing. Sif is as accomplished a warrior as any of the male gods, and never needs saving – just a reminder that retreating is sometimes the better part of valor. Only Frigga gets a rushed, one-note treatment, and even then it involves her killing a frost giant with a sword.

Thor’s not a perfect movie – at times it felt a little rushed, something that has never been said before about any Kenneth Branagh movie ever – but it’s an excellent one, with some of the best treatment of female characters in the genre. And it’s out on DVD, so if you missed it in theaters, now’s your chance!

Violence: The movie’s PG-13 rating comes from pretty standard superhero-movie brawls. There’s a lot of punching, but no gore and no death (except CGI frost giants).

Sexualized Violence: None.

Gender: There are three prominent female characters, all of whom are smart, capable, and bundled up in winter clothes throughout.

The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Passes in the first five minutes. I know, I couldn’t believe it either!

Minorities: The movie got some high-profile flack from racists for casting Idris Elba, who is black, as Heimdall (and I assume also for casting Tadanobu Asano, who is Japanese, as Hogun). It’s nice to see Marvel Studios pushing a more color blind casting, but I’d have liked to see more than three minorities (Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury makes a cameo after the credits), including some women of color.

Parents May Wish to Be Aware: The scenes with the frost giants and/or the Destroyer might be scary for younger children; I’d advise screening it for children much younger than the recommended PG-13 rating, but it’s probably suitable for ages 10 and up.

- Review by Jessica Plummer

Enter Fumi Yoshinaga’s Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy, which, despite having a mouthful for a title (GROAN), is one of the better foodie manga I’ve read. Perhaps it’s the form. Not Love is a series of 15 vignettes that take place at 15 real restaurants in Tokyo. It’s heavier on plot than typical foodie manga, and follows a year or so in the lives of manga artist Y-Naga and her friends as they enjoy phenomenal meals and stumble through careers and relationships. It is very loosely based on Yoshinaga’s life (see the similarity in names and careers between Y-Naga and the author), and features a great cast of rotating characters.

I was particularly impressed with a chapter in which Y-Naga takes her friend A-Dou out for sushi. Y-Naga has written comics about gay characters, but never realized that A-Dou was gay. Throughout the dinner, the two bond over an incredibly illustrated meal, and Y-Naga explores her own prejudices and assumptions about gay culture. It’s a little heavy-handed at times, but nice to see such a subject addressed with some nuance.

Not Love is a travelogue of sorts, but also serves as a cultural document. It works well in translation, providing an inside peek into contemporary Japanese food culture. It occurred to me more than once while reading that I needed to take this book with me as a restaurant guide when I go to Tokyo.

Yoshinaga’s other works that have been translated into English include Ooku and All My Darling Daughters. Both are worth a read as well.

Violence: Next to none, unless you’re a vegetarian.
Sexualized Violence: None
Gender: There are several solid women characters. Y-Naga is a single career woman who, though she would like to settle down someday, is in no hurry.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Pass! Y-Naga and her male and female friends do discuss their romantic lives, but also discuss food and personal values.
Minorities: This is a Japanese comic about urban Japanese life. There isn’t much room for other cultures here.
Parents May Wish to Be Aware: Characters do discuss sex and homosexuality, but nothing is overly offensive, lewd, or condemning of other lifestyles.

Review by Erin Polgreen

Originally a supporting character for Judge Dredd, the irreverent and vivacious Anderson was a big enough hit with the readers to keep coming back and quickly get upgraded to the lead in 2000 AD’s first Dredd’s spin-off strip. With a quick wit and line of informal puns, irritating and bewildering the stiffer Judges (which is most of them), Anderson makes for a very different lead character. Her lighter attitude also means the strip carries more of a punch when it goes for the harder-edged, bleaker, and more disturbing moments – Dredd being an uncompromising bastard who does questionable things is what Dredd does, but Anderson is more human and it’s more of a shock.

Psi Files Vol.1 collects almost every Anderson strip from the 1980s, and that is a lot of strips: this is a weighty tome that will take you several days to get through. Unlike with the Dredd Case Files, this strip started after 2000 AD had gotten a bit more sophisticated and organised: the strips are well-crafted works from the jump. But the 80s was also a time when 2000 AD got gradually more mature (relatively speaking) and willing to experiment, so we start with a barnstorming, blackly comic action saga with Anderson & Dredd’s nemesis Judge Death and end with a moodier, disquieting involving child abuse. It’s a fascinating look at the evolution of the comic and the writers, especially when John Wagner departs and Alan Grant (Batman) takes over the strip solo.

The art is a wide-ranging mix of styles, from Brett Ewins dynamic cartooning to Arthur Ranson’s realism; particular standout work goes to David Roach, who goes from realism to dark, shadowy nightmare scenes at the drop of a hat and sometimes in the same panel. The standout panel is Ewins’ depiction of a possessed youth though: you’ll never forget that demon’s ugly mug. The scripts also change with the artists – Ewins gets Judge Death, Roach the child abuse storyline – and they blend well.

The only real downside is that Cass, as befits a psychic, ends up becoming more introspective and emotionally vulnerable (though she almost always remains a strong, engaging lead). There is a slight sense that this is not just because she’s a psychic and other Judges aren’t, but because Cass is a female lead and Dredd isn’t. However, this does get balanced out by the presence in earlier strips – she resigned in a Dredd story between Andersons – of Chief Judge Hilda McGruder, a hard-assed Judge’s Judge and foil for Cass.

Violence: Lots, and almost constant: massacres, gunfights, physical brawling. A lot of it is supernatural and comic-booky, but later stories make it more serious and focus on the aftermath. Engram does not explicitly show child abuse but the implications may be a trigger for some.

Sexualized Violence: One scene in Hour Of The Wolf: a female psychic uses BDSM fantasies to control a brainwashed male Judge.

Gender: Cassandra Anderson is unquestionably the lead, with her friend and partner Psi-Judge Corey and boss Chief Judge McGruder as important leads. Women also serve as anything from secondary Judges, civilian background characters, villains comedic and dangerous, and civilians driving a plot. Most of the art does not sexualise.

The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Repeated passes, particularly in the Helios strip where Anderson and Corey are teamed up, and in Four Dark Judges with McGruder investigating Cassandra for alleged dereliction of duty.

Minorities: Sadly few, though the later Chief Judge Silver is a middle-aged black man. Russian characters are mostly agents of the sinister East-Meg One.

Parents May Wish to Be Aware: The earliest strips were aimed at ten year olds but got more mature as the series went on. Teenagers should have no problems though.

Review by Charles RB

Books like this are a shot in the arm!

It starts with a little history of the field–as one might expect, Stan’s own experience is recalled in more detail. I’m not weeping over the brevity of the section on the Nineties, though.

Chapters two, three and four talk about drawing, specifically materials and anatomy. Really, this is too large a part of the process to rely on this book alone unless the art part is not going to be on your plate–but, fortunately, there’s a list of recommended reading included, and I can vouch for the ten of the fourteen on the list that I own. Books, I haz them.

Chapter five and six have some of the great rarer stuff. Five talks about design choices, as they apply to character acting and panel action; six gets into character naming and costumes. Anecdotes!

Chapter seven is dear to my heart. Environments, or backgrounds as they are often dismissively called, are discussed, yes, but there’s more! The book discusses how to use Google’s SketchUp to help with perspective for objects like houses–and in some detail. So, for you who are desperately terrified of complex perspective, this one’s for you. (I don’t blame you.)

Chapter eight is worth the price of the book alone.

Why? Because it deals with one of the most difficult and technical parts of comics–and the part of the mix that makes comics what they are.

Layouts, people! Stan discusses eye path, cinematic continuity, camera angles, clarity… and then there’s the true chewy gold centre for aspiring comic makers.

Mistakes. Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Jezreel Morales produces a four-page layout of an action scene with specific problems, which Stan then discusses–not only what’s gone awry, but why. It includes my pet peeve, rampant abuse of panel break-out!

Another useful element is a sample 3-age breakdown/layout by Wilson Tortosa, which is designed to be worked up to completion or expanded upon in new ways by a developing artist. How cool is that?

Developing artists may enjoy chapter nine especially. It discusses pencilling styles, and showcases some very different, but quite effective, pencillers and discusses the development of style over time–Al Rio starting out as a clone of J. Scott Campbell? Having only become familiar with Rio fairly recently, it’s heartening to see how much a style can grow. But then, I can barely picture the stark differences between early Deodato and modern Deodato, and I own a good chunk of his Wonder Woman run. Does not compute!

Speaking of Deodato, there’s some process pages where the book demonstrates how to use photoreference properly–that is, as to support your carefully-considered layout design, not as a replacement for purveyors of pornface. Derivative pornface at that.

Chapters ten, eleven, and twelve deal with inking, lettering, and colouring, and covers are discussed in good detail. The final chapter is concerned with portfolios and getting work in the industry. The indexes include, as mentioned, the reading list, some schools offering courses in comics (all American), and even places to find art supplies.

As a primer on the many and varied aspects of production, I haven’t found a better one. Some of the content is similar to How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way, but unlike that book, this has quite a breadth of artists in it and has a broader focus.

It’s not without problems–there’s a section on representing ethnicities that’s not really worth listening to. This is a standard, pervasive problem with almost every drawing book I ever encountered–everybody’s got that European body and face. Blah. Hunt ye down Joumana Medlej’s resources for ethnotypes instead. Also, there’s some of the usual stuff about female characters needing to remain sensual without heavy emphasis on muscle… of course, the last full illustration in the book is Frank Cho’s physically powerful Red Sonja with a big axe on her shoulder, so take that as you will. There’s a few issues like that, but nothing that makes me want to kill-kill-never-stop.

It’s a big field, and Stan’s experience is put to good use discussing not just the practises but also the reasoning behind them. And call me a keener, but I’d rather have a slab of a book that gives a more complete picture than a dozen skinny ones–and this book isn’t even a slab. For real facility, you will need to supplement this book with others in the field in question. But the reading list has some excellent material, and I do encourage checking out some of the titles listed.

Seriously, this is at the top of my list on technical grounds alone, but it’s also served by Stan himself–you know he loves comics, and that comes through. That kind of spirit is a tonic for me when I’m banging my head against the latest production problem, and makes me remember why I love comics in the first place.

Violence: Present, and varies–because it’s not a narrative, the art jumps all over the place in style and content.

Sexualized Violence: None.

Gender: Inherent problem of anatomy discussion–plus the usual silliness about drawing women. Not egregious.

The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Not really applicable.

Minorities: Just ignore everything on pages 70-71 that discuss ethnicity in particular and looking for Joumana Medlej’s series on ethnotypes.

Parents May Wish to Be Aware: There’s comic book violence and more than a little cleavage.

Review by Winterbourne.

Moving from the teens and twenty-somethings of Scary Go Round to the children of Bad Machinery lets Allison give his natural gift for dialogue full rein. His cast of smart, guileless kids all have distinctive voices and a sharp phrasing which was SGR’s hallmark. Awkward relationships are as engaging as monster hunting when rendered in in his colourful, expressive style.

Violence: Some bullying, some cartoonish monster-fighting. Nothing serious.

Sexualized Violence: None.

Gender: The girls (who have roughly equal time, perhaps a little more, with the boys) are pro-active, clever and irrepressible. They are distinctively female without being stereotyped.

The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Passes near-constantly.

Minorities: Linton and his family (who are black) are the only significant non-white characters.

Parents May Wish to Be Aware: Apart from the occasional bullying scenes, I can’t think of anything.

Review by Sean Halsey

With this book, writer Joshua Dysart takes the basic ideas of Greendale, a concept album about the Iraq War, environmentalism, and a small California town’s reaction to it all, and turns it into a beautiful story about one 17-year-old girl, Sun Green, whose female family members have always held some amount of sway over the forces of nature. Sun is a girl who is deeply concerned about the world around her, an avowed pacifist and environmentalist who doesn’t understand, in 2003, why the whole planet seems to be going to hell. Meanwhile, things are spinning out of control within the small, close-knit circle of her family, and a mysterious devil presence is set on making them even worse. It’s up to Sun to realize exactly what kind of power she has and use it to combat those evils, both personal and global.

The book has a strong narrative, despite how meandering the original music is, and the people of Greendale, California all feel deeply real. The focus on matrilineal power is especially awesome, as Sun draws strength from her female ancestors, all of whom have distinct personalities. But the biggest highlight of the book is probably Chiang’s art, which is clean, soft, expressive, and simply gorgeous. The most mundane elements of the book shine under his pencils, and the fantastical elements positively sparkle. Even if this doesn’t sound like the book for you, I recommend flipping through it in a bookstore or a library just to check out the art.

But mostly I recommend this book to anyone who, like me, found themselves in high school in the harsh, confusing days of the early 2000s and wished they, like Sun Green, had the power to change the world.

Violence: A few moments of gun violence, including a murder and an attempted suicide, and a few scattered scenes of minor fantastical violence. But the protagonist’s pacifist beliefs mitigate the violence and definitively cast it in a negative light.

Sexualized Violence: None that I can recall. Even the devil character’s violence is completely nonsexual.

Gender: This is the story of a young woman coming of age and taking charge of her own inner power, as passed down matrilineally throughout her family’s history. It’s a profoundly feminist book about female agency.

The Bechdel-Wallace Test: The book absolutely passes, as Sun has conversations with various female relatives and a classmate with no reference to men whatsoever.

Minorities: Easily the weakest point in the book, especially given the California setting. This is largely because almost all of the characters are members of Sun’s (white) family, but all of the supporting characters are also white.

Parents May Wish to Be Aware: I would rate this book at least PG-13; there is definitely implied sex in addition to the aforementioned violence. But nothing is particularly graphic, and the moments of near-nudity are completely tasteful.

Review by Jennifer Margret Smith