You may remember that quite a while back I wrote an article about women in the comic industry, in that article I mentioned Womanthology, a new anthology bringing together female creators that was a roaring success on the crowd funding website, Kickstarter. Well, last month I finally got my copy of the book and naturally, the time has come to review it.
Based on first impressions alone, this is a beautiful book with a huge shiny hardback cover boasting that wonderful Womanthology: Heroic artwork that was all over the promotional material. Unlike what I’m used to, this book is probably more of a coffee table art book than any other anthology I’ve bought, as there are not only comics inside but beautiful pin-up pages too. It costs just under £40 in UK stores, less if you go the Amazon route with all profits going straight to charity. None of the contributors were paid.
So what about the contents? Well, if you read comics you’ll undoubtedly recognise some names here. Gail Simone, Nicola Scott and Camilla D’Errico are all included, though teamed up with less well known creators, which gives interesting results. After the initial rush of pleasure at unwrapping the book, the stories, for the most part, do not disappoint. The book starts strong, with my favourite story being by Renae De Liz featuring Lady Power Punch, which delivers on both story and art. Other standouts include Everwell, Swimming and The Little Stranger. There is also a comic strip running along the bottom of the pages throughout the book called RPG by Stacie Ponder which is hilarious. There are stories in here that leave you wanting more than the few pages they’re allotted, and that alone is a measure of their success.
However, as much as I wanted to unreservedly love it, the central conceit of the book being stories about women by women wore thin for me, as I felt it lacked variety. I felt that some of the stories became tedious, presenting their ‘women read and make comics too’ message with a lack of elegance. The thing is, the people buying and reading this book aren’t the ones who need convincing. Maybe it’s just me. I’m not the type for rousing, empowerment type stories, and your mileage may vary. That didn’t stop it all feeling a little condescending in places and there’s no denying that the book lags a little in the middle. To put it bluntly, there are stories that are forgettable and art that isn’t as polished as it should be in an anthology of this ambition and price point. There is also, unforgivably, more than one instance of the word bubble order in a story being slightly off, so that reading it is confusing. Not the way to convince new readers that comics are accessible.
The danger of the inclusion of noticeably weaker stories and awkward art is that critics of this movement (and they are many and vehement) will be able to point to this as undeniable proof of the harm that is done when someone is hired simply for their gender, which undermines the entire concept. Perhaps a slightly more discerning editorial process would have silenced those critics and created a finished book that is a success from beginning to end.
Overall, I think this book earns its price tag. Aside from the stories, there are interviews, how-to guides for everything from writing, to pencils, to lettering and beautiful pin up pages. The best work looks at the heroic theme in interesting ways, not just exploring the most obvious aspects of it, and steers well away from being preachy, and for those stories alone, Womanthology: Heroic is well worth your time and money.
