Great Comics by Non-Male Creators
By Zack Quaintance — The last couple weeks have been difficult for the industry side of comics, with a number of creators being revealed as perpetrators of sexual misconduct, often by young and talented female creators who were discouraged from continuing on in an already-difficult industry by the unwanted advances. An important part of this discourse has been around what other men in comics can do to create a safer and more welcoming atmosphere.
If there’s anything I think we do well here at Comics Bookcase, it’s lift up good work, and (if I may be so bold) I think our best avenue for doing this is often through lists of reading recommendations. Today I’ve compiled a reading list of recent Great Comics by Non-Male Creators. Most of these picks — regular readers may notice — have been culled from our Best of the Year lists, which puts them not only among our favorite comics by non-male creators, but among our favorite comics being made today.
Enjoy!
Great Comics by Non-Male Creators
Guts
Writer/Artist: Raina Telgemeier
Publisher: Scholastic
Raina wakes up one night with a terrible upset stomach. Her mom has one, too, so it's probably just a bug. Raina eventually returns to school, where she's dealing with the usual highs and lows: friends, not-friends, and classmates who think the school year is just one long gross-out session. It soon becomes clear that Raina's tummy trouble isn't going away... and it coincides with her worries about food, school, and changing friendships. What's going on?
Why It’s Cool: Raina Telgemeir is not only one of the highest-selling creators in comics — she’s one of the highest-selling authors in the world, and books like 2019’s Guts are the reason why. It is, ostensibly, a book for children and about children, but Telgemeir’s work never talks down to youngsters. There are touchpoints of growing up that anyone (young and old) can relate to, but at the same time, Telgemeir’s books unflinchingly include real tragedies without any sort of coddling. In this book, that means an honest look at the stomach problem’s Raina experienced as a child, and the psychological root causes for them. The end result is stunning and immersive work within the comics medium, work that is currently in the process of influencing an entire generation of new comics creators.
Release Date: September 17, 2019
Buy It Digitally: Guts via comiXology
The Hard Tomorrow
Writer/Artist: Eleanor Davis
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working - or "working" - on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. They're currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Told with tenderness and care in an undefined near future, Eleanor Davis's The Hard Tomorrow blazes unrestrained, as moments of human connection are doused in fear and threats.
Why It’s Cool: Character-driven above all else, The Hard Tomorrow is a subtle, compelling, and artful look at the ways people of differing political inclinations are responding to the fear and uncertainty of our chaotic and rapidly-changing times. The book has elements of romance, crime fiction, and thriller, all woven together into a gorgeous and grounded narrative tapestry. The Hard Tomorrow is the sort of book you’ll read in one sitting, before immediately starting it over once you’re done.
Release Date: October 9, 2019
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me
Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Publisher: First Second
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There's just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend. Reeling from her latest break up, Freddy's best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: Break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it's really Laura Dean that's the problem. Maybe it's Freddy, who is rapidly losing her friends, including Doodle, who needs her now more than ever. Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends and the insight of advice columnists like Anna Vice to help her through being a teenager in love.
Why It’s Cool: Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is one of the best romance stories in all of comics in recent years, although it’s not romantic, not really. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. This book is more of a coming-of-age story that explores the tragedy of being young and inexperienced in love, leading to choices made of inexperience and desperation. More than anything, this is a story about trying to couple with people who are so clearly wrong for you, which gives it a forlorn and universal feeling of learning and growing. It’s also beautifully illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, whose linework throughout is just phenomenal.
Release Date: May 1, 2019
Mirror
Writer: Emma Rios
Artist: Hwei Lim
Publisher: Image Comics
EMMA RÍOS (PRETTY DEADLY, ISLAND) and HWEI LIM (Lalage, Hero) present MIRROR: THE MOUNTAIN, a story about the mage-scientists of The Synchronia and the sentient animals of Irzah colony. Collects MIRROR #1-5.
Why It’s Cool: I read Mirror’s first arc month-to-month as it came to comic book stores, and it felt a bit like inhabiting an updated version of a childhood dream. The story was set on an asteroid space colony populated by royalty and sentient animals locked in a conflict of oppression, and it was rendered into exquisite and ethereal life by Hwei Lim’s watercolored visuals, perfect for every aspect of this story from the plot to the characters to above all the setting. It was quite an experience, and the fact that we got two volumes of this story is quite fortunate. Much like the reading experience itself, it’s sometimes hard to wrap your head around. Just stunning work from all involved.
Release Date: Finale - April 3, 2019
Buy It Digitally: Mirror: The Mountain via comiXology
Monstress
Writer: Marjorie Liu
Artist: Sana Takeda
Publisher: Image Comics
MARJORIE LIU returns to comics with artist SANA TAKEDA (X-23) for an all-new ONGOING SERIES! Steampunk meets Kaiju in this original fantasy epic for mature readers, as young Maika risks everything to control her psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, placing her in the center of a devastating war between human and otherworldly forces.
Why It’s Cool: Since this title launched way back in 2015, it’s been among my favorite books in all of comics, and it’s easily the best of the fantasy genre within the medium right now. Writer Marjorie Liu and artist Sana Takeda work so well in tandem, with Liu’s complex world-building and character-driven plotting lending layer upon layer of complexity to the breathtaking work that Takeda puts forth, which is among the most intricate in all of comics. With its 29th issue due late this month, this book is probably closer to its end than it is to its beginning, but there’s still so much left to love about this title.
Release Date: Monstress #29 is due out July 22, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Monstress via comiXology
My Favorite Thing is Monsters
Writer/Artist: Emil Ferris
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.
Why It’s Cool: I think it’s pretty safe to say that you (yes, you!) have never had a reading experience quite like the one in My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Unless, of course, you have in fact read My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. The artwork in this book creates the experience of paging through a young person’s sketchbook as they navigate a life as an outsider, both real and perceived, depicting themselves as a monster. It’s an immersive and singular experience that I would recommend to any and all fans of comic book storytelling. It’s also the type of graphic novel that I have regularly recommended to folks outside of the usual comics readers I know, and I’ve had nothing but excellent results.
Release Date: February 15, 2017
Buy It Digitally: My Favorite Thing is Monsters via comiXology
On a Sunbeam
Writer/Artist: Tillie Walden
Publisher: First Second
As Mia, the newest member, gets to know her team, the story flashes back to her pivotal year in boarding school, where she fell in love with a mysterious new student. When Mia grows close to her new friends, she reveals her true purpose for joining their ship-to track down her long-lost love. An inventive world, a breathtaking love story, and stunning art come together in this new work by award-winning artist Tillie Walden. Available in softcover and hardcover editions.
Why It’s Cool: On a Sunbeam is perhaps the single most beautiful and imaginative graphic novel to grace the industry in recent years. It’s a coming-of-age story set in space, but it’s a space unlike any I’d ever before seen depicted. Writer/artist Tillie Walden’s design work in this comic — for everything from a spaceship to a classroom — is unique and novel, creating the sense that the story fell fully-formed from their consciousness. It’s immersive, and perfect read on nights alone. Just an incredible work, start to finish.
Release Date: October 3, 2018
Pretty Deadly
Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick
Artist: Emma Rios
Publisher: Image Comics
KELLY SUE DECONNICK (Avengers Assemble, Captain Marvel) & EMMA RÍOS (Dr. Strange, Osborn) reunite to bring you an all-new ongoing series that marries the magical realism of Sandman with the western brutality of Preacher. Death's daughter rides the wind on a horse made of smoke and her face bears the skull marks of her father. Her tale of retribution is as beautifully lush as it is unflinchingly savage.
Why It’s Cool: Pretty Deadly bills itself as Sandman meets Preacher, and while I often think those sort of descriptions are inaccurate for comics, this one is very much fitting. The entire story crafts its own fantastical rule governed by sensical laws, much like the one we find in Sandman. And then it opens up with a brutalist Western setting to apply its world to. In more recent issue, that setting has transitioned to Old Hollywood, making Pretty Deadly the rarest sort of my favorite comics — one in which anything is possible within the vast world of imagination that has been forged.
Release Date: Pretty Deadly The Rat - March 18, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Pretty Deadly via comiXology
Submerged
Writer: Vita Ayala
Artist: Lisa Sterle
Publisher: Vault Comics
On the night of the biggest storm in New York City history, Elysia Puente gets a call from her estranged little brother Angel, terrified and begging for help. When the call cuts out suddenly, despite the bad feelings between them, Ellie rushes into the night. Finding his broken phone in front of a barricaded subway station, Ellie follows echoes of her brother into the sinister darkness of the underground, desperate to find him before it's too late.
Why It’s Cool: Submerged by Vita Ayala, Lisa Sterle, Stelladia, and Rachel Deering is an urban fantasy tale inspired by Hurricane Sandy, and its plot sends its protagonist on a journey through the city’s underground that speaks to issues of love and family. Such an intriguing, heartfelt story.
Release Date: January 30, 2019
Buy It Digitally: Submerged via comiXology
Supergirl: Being Super
Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Joelle Jones
Publisher: DC Comics
She’s super-strong. She can fly. She crash-landed on Earth in a rocket ship. But for Kara Danvers, winning the next track meet, celebrating her 16th birthday and surviving her latest mega-zit are her top concerns. And with the help of her best friends and her kinda-infuriating-but-totally-loving adoptive parents, she just might be able to put her troubling dreams-shattered glimpses of another world-behind her. Until an earthquake shatters her small town of Midvale…and uncovers secrets about her past she thought would always stay buried. Now Kara’s incredible powers are kicking into high gear, and people she trusted are revealing creepy ulterior motives. The time has come for her to choose between the world where she was born and the only world she’s ever known. Will she find a way to save her town and be super, or will she crash and burn?
Why It’s Cool: This book precedes the creation of DC Comics’ Black Label imprint, but this is the exact type of stand-alone comic it was created for. In Supergirl: Being Super, Mariko Tamaki and top-tier superhero artist Joelle Jones re-imagine Supergirl’s origin story, spreading it out across four fantastic over-sized prestige issues. It’s the type of high-production value comic that will be a denizen of shop shelves for a generation, and I can’t recommend it enough for fans of all things Super, as well as for fans of well-done coming-of-age stores…that also have superpowers.
Release Date: June 5, 2018
Buy It Digitally: Supergirl Being Super via comiXology
Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and a freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about comics as Comics Bookcase.