You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Comics’ category.
“But I’m not interested in power! I just want to get my mom back and go home.”
Amulet is a multi-part graphic novel by Kabu Kizuishi. While it follows the adventures of two siblings, the sister is more prominent and qualifies, I think, as a Girl Underground.
In the first installment, The Stonekeeper, Emily and her brother Navin move with their mother to an old, inherited house in the middle of nowhere, after their father’s death. Emily finds a stone necklace in her great-grandfather’s study, and the stone warns her of a danger to her family. Soon after, her mother is taken by a terrifying creature in the basement, and the siblings go far underground to find her, but the way closes behind them. They then embark on a journey in another world, with the help of the amulet. Emily has been chosen to inherit its power.
They find their ailing great-grandfather in this other world, and he explains a little more before dying and leaving his mechanical assistants to help them. Emily must accept the power of the stone to activate the robots and save her family. They chase after the creature and free their mother (who has been poisoned). Emily confronts the shadowy man who has been chasing them, and it turns out that he wants her and the stone’s power to kill his father, the elf king. He tries to invade her mind but she pushes back against him, and simultaneously against the stone which wants her to kill him.
In the second book, they work to save their mom from the poison, Emily struggles with the dangerous power offered by the stone, and the true adversary is revealed: the elf king himself.
I have not read further than this, but it seems like it will continue in the same GU vein.
“‘You must believe that you are here by choice, and not by circumstance.’ ‘But what if that’s not true?’ ‘You must make it true.’”
“It’s hard to tell time underground.”
I’ve already profiled Holly Black’s Modern Faerie series here, which is excellent. Now Black has a graphic novel series for young adults which also fits the basic GU model: The Good Neighbors (#1 Kin #2 Kith #3 Kind), illustrated by Ted Naifeh.
Rue’s mother has mysteriously disappeared, her father is drowning in his own sorrows, and now she has a new problem: she sees strange creatures everywhere that no one else can see. Her father is arrested for murder, and then the grandfather she never met shows up and tries to control her. In the midst of all of this, she discovers the truth – she can see fairies, and her mother is one of them. Which makes her one of them. What’s more concerning is that her grandfather is planning to somehow take over the city and cut it off from the rest of the world, creating a haven for fairies.
Rue’s companions are her mortal friends and the human Tam who has long served the fairies. She goes underground into a fairy hill to visit her mother. Time is running out. While trying to thwart her grandfather’s plan, she must also save her boyfriend from perilous river fairies who are sucking the life out of him. But this strays from the usual GU plot in that there is never a final confrontation with the adversary, and in fact it is how Rue loses her battle that defines her character, and her future.
Sometimes I wonder about the female adversaries that exist in some Girls Underground stories – the wicked stepmothers, nasty witches, evil queens… were they once themselves the girl on the quest, only to stay too long down there in the dark and become something for other girls to fear?
We can actually see this process happen in the continuation of one of the bloodier GU stories, Hellraiser. The Comics Alliance blog reports that a new graphic novel series based on the original story and movie has provided the ultimate twist:
Last year BOOM! Studios launched a new Hellraiser series by Clive Barker that marked the influential horror writer’s return to his most famous creation after decades away. Co-written with Christopher Monfette and drawn by Leonardo Manco, the book’s first arc was a hit with fans of the storied franchise, concluding with original Hellraiser heroine Kristy Cotton replacing the iconic Pinhead character as the demonic Cenobites’ head of human soul-harvesting.
This makes sense to me, after years and years of reading these stories, and living my own strange version. The otherworld is not always a gentle place, and the Girl is always changed by her time there, after all.
I just discovered a clever, entertaining webcomic called Cheshire Crossing. It tells the story of Alice, Dorothy and Wendy meeting in what they think is yet another mental institution (they’ve all been diagnosed with dissociative disorders), getting to know each other and their powers (because the ability to visit places like Oz and Neverland isn’t just an accident, it’s a special gift). They end up crossing between their respective otherworlds several times, encountering each other’s adversaries and companions.
Unfortunately, it seems to be on hold for now, but there are four issues to read for free on the website.
(Interestingly, this isn’t the only comic-style meeting of these three characters, as they are the stars of Alan Moore’s Lost Girls graphic novel, although that is perhaps aimed at a more, ahem, mature audience.)
As an aside, I found this via the tvtropes page for “Down the Rabbit Hole” which not only covers many GU plot points and examples, but links to my Girls Underground website!
