Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
My wife and I went to our local comic shop several months ago, and this was one of the books she grabbed. I liked the art, she liked it was a story about women, by women. I want to get out of the way right that the outset that the art of Sana Takeda is absolutely beautiful. I mean, that’s immediately obvious from the cover. Beyond that, there was almost nothing about this book that I liked. We start off with Maika Halfwolf, an Arcanic, […]
Monstress, vol 1: The Awakening by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda
CBR14 Bingo: Monster (there are several monsters in this story, both humanoid and not) Official book 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 and make them the target of both human and otherworldly powers. So total honesty here. […]
I adored the first volume of Marjorie Liu’s Monstress. Sana Takeda’s art is one of the most stunning that I’ve come across in a comic. At the same time, it’s also unbelievably violent and brutal. I find this pairing somewhat evocative of the Hannibal TV series, which I also loved. (I don’t know what this says about me – that I am ok with gore, provided it’s beautifully presented?) Monstress is set an alternative, matriarchal, steampunk Asia, which is inhabited by humans, anthropomorphic animal gods […]
I feel like this series is just getting more confusing the longer it goes, and I am less and less interested. It also continues to be overly bleak with no humor at all to lighten it up. The art continues to be gorgeous. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. It’s been a couple of months (I think) between actually reading it and writing this review, but I seem to recall a pirate ship adventure, and nobody trusting Maika at all, and the monster inside […]
With graphic novels, you can unashamedly say that you bought a book based entirely on its cover. What intrigued me about the cover of Monstress was the stunningly beautiful artwork juxtaposed with the title, which clearly implied something, well, monstrous. What’s inside is a beautifully written high fantasy story that blends Eastern and Western art and deals with issues like war, racism, and slavery and also features wonderfully complex female characters. The story is centered around Maika Halfwolf an Arcanics. Arcanics are human-animal hybrids […]
Our titular monstress is seventeen year old Maika Halfwolf, and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about her, to be perfectly honest. Maika lives in a fantastical Asiatic inspired world where women rule, and the world is currently being torn apart by a war between humans and arcanics (magical beings, essentially; it’s more complicated than that). All kinds of magical shit is normal to this world: people with wings, immortality, ancient beings (literally called ancients) who look like animals but aren’t, a race […]
