Spotlight: Asterix And The Goths by Goscinny & Uderzo – buy it here!
365 Graphic Novels is here!
Dead Queen Detectives by Bevis Musson is available here!
The Whale House #1 by Andrew Cheverton & Chris Doherty is available in print here, or digitally here!

Show Timings:

00:01:30 Our weeks

00:10:30 This week’s comics
00:12:00 John Carter Gods Of Mars #3 Sam Humphries & Ramon Perez
00:12:20 Glory #26 Joe Keatinge & Ross Campbell
00:14:30 Mondo #2 Ted McKeever
00:16:30 Science Tales by Darryl Cunningham
00:22:00 Manhattan Projects #3 Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra
00:26:00 Conan The Barbarian #4 Brian Wood & James Harren
00:31:00 A Vs X #4 Jonathan Hickman & John Romita Jr & Scott Hanna
00:35:00 Saucer Country #3 Paul Cornell & Ryan Kelly
00:38:30 Saga #3 Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples

00:43:30 365GraphicNovels
00:45:00 Dead Queen Detectives by Bevis Musson
00:46:00 The Whale House #1 by Andrew Cheverton & Chris Doherty
00:47:00 MOMBquestion – What is your priority when choosing which Comic Convention to go to?

01:01:00 Spotlight: Asterix And The Goths by Goscinny & Uderzo

01:21:00 Our coming weeks

Jon’s spotlight this week is Witch Doctor by Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner – buy it here!

Show notes and Timings:

00:01:00 Our weeks

00:29:00 This week’s comics
00:29:00 Journey Into Mystery #637 by Kieron Gillen/Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning & Carmine di Giandomenico
00:30:30 Ferals #5 by David Lapham & Gabriel Andrade
00:34:30 Alabaster: Wolves #2 by Caitlin R Kiernan & Steve Lieber
00:37:00 Batman #9 by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo and James T Tynion IV & Rafael Albuquerque
00:44:00 Mystery In Space by various

00:51:30 Free Comic Book Day competition winner announcements!
00:57:30 Stacey Whittle’s Bristol Question

01:00:30 Spotlight: Witch Doctor by Brandon Seifert & Lukas Ketner

Dial H comes in as the obligatory “Dark” title along with 5 others in DC’s second wave of the new 52. By rights they probably should have called it the new 58, but then DC cancelled 6 of the first wave so it’s still 52 technically & if, like me, you can’t keep up well one month from now it’s not going to matter because everyone will be talking about Before Watchmen instead. Now it may sound like I’m being a little snarkastic in my observations before I’ve even made any & I don’t mean to be, because I really do like this book, but after 22 pages it left me feeling somewhat conflicted & like somebody had put a completely different kind of sugar cube in my tea.

Dial H revolves around the concept of a phone booth that is not like other phone booths. For a start it works & hasn’t been vandalised (though that hasn’t stopped tramps using it as a rest stop), & for another, it bestows temporary super powers on whoever uses it. This book is an update of a previous DC title from way back before I read comics & while I know very little of the original I get the impression it was more light hearted in tone than this current effort. Mielville’s writing has a particularly English sensibility to it & the story feels like it would be more at home in an Eagle comic from the 90’s alongside something like The 13^th Floor than it would in the current DCU continuity. The “dark” aspect of the story is clearly apparent from the get go as the first hero we get a connection with is Boy Chimney. A character whose smokestack hat makes you wonder if he’s taken The Tamperer’s pondering a little too literally. Not to be outdone, the cubicle of costumed Avengers later on deals out the maudlin monikered Captain Lachrymose who looks like the next morning’s come down after Boy Chimney hot boxed his alter ego the night before.

Mielville clearly has a ball with the concept & his fever pitch imagination is easily matched by Santolouco whose pencils lend the proceedings an eerie swoon that again hearkens back to the age of Eagle. This is no bad thing & the pencil work, whilst occasionally looking a little rough in places is remarkably detailed. What’s more Santolouco’s work here stands apart from his pencils for IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or his work for Marvel during the Dark Reign run, but still remains very recognisably his.

So why the conflict? This is a good book, right? Well yeah it is. But as much as I dialled into the concept of Dial H & enjoyed the dark spin put on the proceedings by both writer & artist, the book seems a little out of place for me in the current DC continuity (or the bits of it I’ve been reading at any rate). Try as I might I just can’t imagine any of the Justice League having an adventure that sees them teamed up with one of the many potential hero’s from H’s phone booth. Then again I do find myself wondering what would happen if say, for example, The Flash ended up making the call, or what if there’s an alternate version of the booth on Earth 2 that spits out villains instead of heroes.

Now I don’t have a problem with Dial H being different (in fact it makes me like the book even more), but I can’t help thinking that this title would have been more at home if they dropped in a few curse words & sent it out with a Vertigo label on the cover. Its ideas about people being unwittingly coerced into the super hero game feels reminiscent of the imprint’s mature take on Unknown Soldier & the similar character dynamics involved are quite possibly a huge part of why I enjoyed the book so much.

While I appreciate that it seems a little early to be making such criticisms of a story when I’ve only read the opening chapter this is simply my thought process on reading the first issue.  The reason I’m putting it here is because I want this book to do well so I can carry on reading it.  I could be completely wrong about this book not feeling like it fits into the DC continuity & if you think I am then say so in the comments by all means. Admittedly I haven’t read all of the other 51 books & there’s every chance this fits in just fine, in which case I’m being an arse. Granted the title isn’t for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. So if you’re sat there reading this review pondering whether Dial H is worth putting on your standing order then I’d say give it a go. You might like it you might not. Truth be told though I can’t remember the last time a single issue of a comic made me think to this extent which, when it comes down to it, is what I love about the medium most of all.

As a side note if you haven’t read Unknown Soldier then I highly recommend that you do as it contains more relevant facts about Uganda & its inhabitants in one panel than Kony 2012 managed in 30 minutes.

In it, we talk A LOT about comics, especially the ones given away on Free Comic Book Day. And about lots of other things. It was ace.

The very generous folk at Forbidden Planet Southampton also gave us a whole bunch of Free Comic Book Day comics to give away, including the incredibly desirable Mousegard hardcover from Archaia – find out more about that book and the others during the show – so we’re running a competition!

To enter, send us an email to MOMBcast@gmail.com with the answer to this question:

How many individual comics, including graphic novels and collected editions/trade paperbacks, did Forbidden Planet Southampton sell on Free Comic Book Day 2012 (05/05/2012)?

The closest answer wins a bundle including one copy of every FCBD comic made available to the store. First runner up will receive another copy of the Mousegard hardcover, and further runners up will receive smaller bundles of FCBD comics.

The competition closes at 18:00 on Thursday 10th May, GMT.

Everybody is free to enter, except for employees of Forbidden Planet or MOMB, and we’ll dispatch to anywhere in the world.

(So we’re hoping the prizes will go to someone local, but we’ll abide by whoever actually wins!)

Hosted by JaneMOMB, JamesMOMB, JonMOMB and Nixsight.
Contributions by James, Lawrence (and very briefly Rose) at Forbidden Planet Southampton. We’d like to thank all the people at Forbidden Planet Southampton for having us, and their customers for putting up with us for the day.

(It is a long episode, though, and we make no apologies for the use of music in this special – it was very important to Nick and James.)

Spotlight: Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello & Victor Santos – buy it here!
Contribution by Michael Georgiou.
Theme-tune by Steev Bishop.

Show notes and timings:

00:03:00 Our Weeks

00:20:30 This Week’s Comics
00:21:30 Dial H #1 by China Mieville/Mateus Santolouco
00:30:00 Too Much Sex & Violence #3 by Rol Hirst et al – buy it here!
00:35:00 The Whale House by Andrew Cheverton & Chris Doherty – buy it soon at UK conventions or here!
00:40:00 2000AD #1781
00:43:00 Amazing Spider-Man #685 by Dan Slott & Humberto Ramos
00:45:30 Manhattan Projects #2 by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra
00:47:00 Epic Kill #1 by Raffaele Ienco
00:47:30 Animal Man #9 Jeff Lemire & Steve Pugh
00:48:30 Daredevil #12 by Mark Waid & Chris Samnee
00:50:00 Exiled #1 by Kieron Gillen/Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning & Carmine Di Giandomenico
00:55:00 Mind The Gap #1 by Jim McCann & Rodin Esquejo/Sonia Oback
01:02:30 A vs X #3 by Ed Brubaker & John Romita Jr
01:05:30 The Boys #66 by Garth Ennis & Russ Braun

01:08:00 Mike Georgiou Wants Faces
01:12:00 FCBD – MOMBcast at FP Southampton!
01:16:00 Steev Bishop Theme Tune!
01:17:00 MOMB Question: What does continuity mean to you?
01:27:00 The Smut Peddler Kickstarter – Contribute here!
01:31:00 Jambo at IndieGogo

01:32:00 Spotlight: Filthy Rich by Brian Azarrello & Victor Santos

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Since Iron Man in 2008, the Avengers have been slowly gathering, and now in 2012 we have the pay-off. Marvel’s Avengers Assemble was well worth the wait. Joss Whedon expertly handles the ensemble cast, the epic scope of the story, and the visuals to create a fantastic start to the Summer blockbuster film season.

The plot is that Loki wishes to enslave humanity to relieve us of the burden and the lie that is freedom (in his mind, anyway). This begins with the Tesseract (the cosmic blue cube from Captain America and Thor) activating in the SHIELD head quarters and bringing Loki to Earth. Loki brainwashes Hawkmen and Dr. Selvig and escapes with them to work on opening a portal to bring his army to Earth (all this happens before the title appears on screen). Nicky Fury then recruits the Marvel heroes to thwart the evil Loki.

The characters are great and true to the films they came from.

Iron Man is every bit as brash as he was in the two previous films. Thor is still as over-the-top, and Captain America is still the clean cut poster-boy.

Hulk is the stand-out in this film for me though. When Black Widow recruits Bruce Banner, we see a character who is helping people in poor villages. He is more like the version we’ve seen in the TV series, and even his Hulk alter-ego is shown in a much more heroic light later in the film, with one of the funniest moments being a scene with the Hulk and Loki (“puny god”).

Every character gets a fair share of screen time, with no-one hero more in the spot light than the other.

The special effects are amazing. Loki’s army (the Chitauri) don’t really start attacking Manhattan until 20 minutes from the end, but the visuals for this are incredible and easily out-shine previous city destructions seen in Transformers 3. The effects for the Hulk were also the best seen on the big screen yet. Loki’s alien army were also well realised, with the armoured serpents looking incredible.

There is a lot of humour in the film too. The previous Hulk moment I mentioned was for me the stand-out, but there were also funny lines from Iron Man and Thor (“Shakespeare in the park” and “doth your mother knoweth you wear her drapes”). There is a good bit with Hulk and Thor with a well-timed punch. Even Agent Coulson manages a funny moment between himself and Captain America over some near-mint trading cards, and then later (spoiler alert) a classic last line with “that’s what it does”.

Black Widow gets to show off her shrewd interrogation tactics twice in the film, and Jeremy Renner delivers as Hawkeye. It is great to see the character moments between them, and to learn of their strong bond. It is also good to see Nick Fury do more than just show up briefly. He gets he opening action sequence, some great character manipulation (with the Captain America trading cards in particular) and gets to shoot down a fighter jet with a bazooka.

It is also worth staying around for the post-credit moment, which in this film isn’t at the very end of the credits but just after the main cast’s names have been listed. A good hint of things to come with a long red-faced alien. Although unfortunately we didn’t get an early look at The Dark Knight Rises’ new trailer which is attached to this film on its American release.

This is a great start to the Summer film season, and a fantastic comic-book hero film. The Amazing Spider-Man, Dredd, and The Dark Knight Rises are still to come, but if they are as good as Avengers Assemble, then we’re really in for a treat this year. I’m already looking forward to seeing it again.

The other podcast Nick was a guest on is Stacey’s Pop Culture Parlour – listen here!

Show Notes & Timings

00:01:00 Our weeks

00:18:30 This week’s comics
00:18:30 Moon Knight #12 by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
00:19:30 Road Rage #3 by Chris Ryall & Rafa Garres
00:24:00 2000AD #1779/1780 by various
00:29:30 Crossed – Wish You Were Here by Simon Spurrier & Javier Barreno – read it here!
00:30:30 Spaceman #6 by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso
00:38:00 American Vampire #26 by Scott Snyder & Roger Cruz
00:41:30 I, Vampire #8  by Joshua Hale Fialkov & Andrea Sorrentino
00:42:30 Jennifer Blood #12 by Al Ewing & Kewber Baal
00:45:00 The Flash #8 by Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato
00:47:30 Daredevil #11 by Mark Waid & Marco Checchetto
00:53:00 FF #17 by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta

00:57:30 George Beedham’s Mighty Jambo almost up! Go! Contribute!
00:59:00 20 Minute Longbox – listen here!

01:00:00 MOMB question: Listener comic reading habits – thanks to everyone who contributed!
01:10:30 Too Much Sex & Violence #3 by Rol Hirst & Various

01:13:30 Spotlight: Leviathan by Ian Edginton & D’israeli – buy it here!

01:30:30 Our coming weeks…

So, it’s been 6 months & 4 issues since the last interview (& the first reviews). How do you both feel about Princeless now the first volume is finished compared to before it started?

JW: Honestly, I feel amazed and grateful.  I always expected that people would like Princeless, but the reception it’s gotten has blown me away.  I never expected such (nearly) unanimous rave reviews, especially from people who didn’t know I existed six months ago.  There have been a couple times with this project that I wrote to a person or a site with little more than a prayer that they might open the email, only to have a thrilled response and a squeeing review follow.  It’s enough to make a person feel as if they might be on to something.

It sounds like every comic book writer’s fairytale to me. Now, you had the first issue of Princeless scripted & ready to go quite a while before it was actually released, but how much of the rest of it was written  beforehand? Was it all there already or did the other chapters come together much later?

The first two arcs have been more or less finished on the writing end since before we started art on issue 1.  Now, some things have definitely changed and there’s been quite a bit of editing (mostly because I write way too much dialogue) but the story is so far intact.  Currently I’m working on writing the third arc out, but I have most of the story laid down from an outline perspective and have for a while.  I have to admit though, as I write I add a lot of material which was never in the original outline.  I believe in having some fluidity in your storytelling to allow things to open up as they dawn on you.

It sounds like you have a fairly organic writing process. So, do you have a definite end in mind for Princeless & has it been there since the beginning or did it develop along with the story? 

I have an end to this story in mind, but the way I see it that doesn’t necessitate an end to Princeless altogether.  It will depend if, at the end of this story, there is still a demand for more.  I could keep writing this book forever as long as there’s somebody there to read it.  The end of this story has always been more or less determined, although I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t gotten a little further away than it once was.  Adrienne’s quest has gotten a bit longer and her path a bit windier over the course of the writing.

In all honesty from the way you write Adrienne I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me that she quite happily did her own thing & told you what to write & would say when she was done. It’s the character of Adrienne’s is one of the books biggest draws but the trade sees you hand her over to Jim Zub for a crossover with the book Skull Kickers. Were you apprehensive handing your baby over to somebody else, even if it was only for 3 pages?

I mean, you can’t help but be a little nervous, but Jim is a great writer and I love his book.  I asked that got to see the script before it went forward to art just so I could make sure it didn’t step on any future plans I had that Jim didn’t know about.  When I got the script I honestly didn’t even have any suggestions.  I think fans of both books should really enjoy this story.

So is there any chance of you doing a Skull Kickers story in future?

I’d love to if Jim would have me, but that’s totally up to him.  I’m sure if the critics started demanding it…hint, hint, hint

Hmmmm… (Starts letter writing campaign). The third chapter of Princeless sees Adrienne sharing her thoughts on Women Warriors & Warrior Women – is this something that’s always got your goat or did it develop out of writing the story? Was having the famous costumes a gag you’d had in mind since the beginning or did it come in later to reinforce the point?

It has always bothered me.  I will readily grant that there was a point when I was thirteen that I didn’t feel quite so much of a moral outrage about Red Sonja’s chainmail bikini, but it’s always seemed like stories are sacrificing real character development in order to make a character sexy.  However, what inspired this particular rant was a bit more personal.  You’re familiar with my first attempt at Princeless with a former artist that only made it to issue 1.  It should have been a sign when the first picture he handed me of Adrienne had her wearing a chest plate, her midriff bare, and a plate mail skirt.  I politely explained to said artist that that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind and then went off to write this admittedly somewhat ranty third issue.

I retweeted someone quite recently that basically said any male designing a costume for a female character should be forced to wear it first. The third issue was probably the highlight of the whole run for me as the costume gag & the message with it can be thought of differently depending on which side of 16 you happen to fall. Is writing the script in a way that has a balanced message for all ages something that takes a lot of effort or do you have a stack of ideas built up that you’re ready  to rant about?

It’s a little bit of both.  The hardest part of it is often to just keep the characters from cursing when I get passionate about something.  If not for some of the language, Dagonet would have almost been all-ages friendly.  I certainly have plenty of things lined up to rant about though, that won’t be running out anytime soon

Is it just the stereotypes in comics or are there other things that really get your goat. Go on, cut loose

I’m a little miffed with mainstream comics and their overuse of certain characters.  I feel like there is a saturation level even for Wolverine and Batman.  If you do nothing but plug your “Big Howevermany” you’re doing just as much to keep your small characters from growing.  The best example of letting a character shine is Iron Man.  Pre Civil War he had trouble even sustaining a book, but they let him shine in Civil War, put an excellent writer on his monthly, and now he’s a big money franchise to rival Spider-Man.  There could be more characters like that if you let them be.  Comics are too timid to take a loss in the short to win in the long.

I have to admit recently Marvel has been putting some pretty high quality names on some of their lesser titles & it’s really starting to bear fruit. So if you could take a six issue shot at bringing any character back from obscurity (& I don’t necessarily mean only in comics either) who would it be & why

Generally my answer to this is flat out, no doubt, Misty Knight.  I love this character and feel like she’s been under and mis-used ever since the Daughters of the Dragon mini Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti did a few years back.  I’d really love to make her as popular as she should be.

But, since you asked that question in such an interesting way, you’re going to get a more interesting answer.  Invader Zim.  With all the bizarre properties that have gotten a shot in the comic book world over the last few years, this too dark for Nickelodeon classic has never been given the shot it deserves.  Zim and Gir are two of my favourite cartoon characters of all time and I’d love to see them get the chance to tear up the pages of a monthly or mini.

 It’s interesting that you mention Misty Knight, because you tend to focus a lot of your writing on female characters & to your credit you write them well. Does it come naturally or have you had to work on writing female characters in order to tell the stories you wanted to?

It’s a little bit of both Jon.  I’ve always had a thing for strong women, whether they be my friends, girlfriends, or just people I admire.  But I also think that, as a writer, you need to study voices that are not your own.  There are too many books out there about whiny white male writers and as a writer you owe it to your characters to endow them with a real voice

I like how you say you owe it to your characters to endow them with a real voice as it’s Adrienne’s voice (& her opinions) which makes her such a well rounded character. You said in our previous interview that Adrienne was based on a number of people you knew, is that true for all of your characters? For example do Beledonia or Adrienne’s brother share a voice with real life counterparts?

Bedelia is a bit of an amalgam of some of my favorite women, including my wife Alicia and my long time friend Ashley.  Both of them are incredibly smart and imaginative women who, like Bedelia, occasionally have so many things going through their head that they don’t all come out in the right order.  Devin is based on a couple boys I’ve known and in this case I’d rather not get too specific.  Devin is in a position where he is being pushed toward glory and honour, but would really be much happier if he could just be himself.  That’s what I like about Devin, he really has a lot of what Adrienne would like to have, but he doesn’t want any of it.

So out of all the characters to grace your pages which one are you?

I like to think there’s a little bit of me in all of them.  I’m the cynical writer like Order of Dagonet’s Everyman.  I’m ambitious and easily frustrated like Adrienne.  I like to think I’m the protective and reluctant Sparky of my eight month old’s life and I’m I was the kid who left football practice early to get to play rehearsal like Devin.  Sometimes I’m even King Ashe, but most often than not it’s my own dreams and habits I’m picking apart.  Luckily, I’m also my own Bedelia, with another crazy idea just around the corner.

For saying this is Rihanna’s first acting gig in a big blockbuster, she doesn’t do bad. There have certainly been a lot worse performances from pop stars who try their hand at acting, and performs pretty well. The effects all look good, and the film moves at a good pace for its 2 hours and change. There is also a funny reference to the boardgame, as they find themselves playing a version of the game with their actual ships whilst trying to sink the alien battleship using wave-displacement.

The film opens with Hopper trying to impress the Admiral’s daughter by getting her a Chicken Burrito. In order to do this he breaks into a convenience store via the roof in what appears to be a recreation of a classic youtube clip where someone broke in via the roof and then found themselves stuck inside. All this is to the ‘Pink Panther’ theme tune, which feels oddly out of place in the film. Once Hopper’s brother persuades him to join the Navy to get his life on track, the film takes some fairly predictable paths, from Hopper being an insubordinate washout, to the (spoiler alert) inevitable death of his brother.

We’re also treated to the aliens’ vision through point-of-view shots that make you think you’re watching Transformers again. The aliens don’t seem to attack if they’re not threatened (so if no gun is trained on them, the object in their field of view shows as green for safe, then red for danger if they feel threatened. This is a ridiculous element of the film, as they have no trouble destroying a busy freeway later in the film filled with innocent people.

It is not as crude as the Transformers movies, and merely hints at four-letter F-words rather than saying them. We also have a hot Megan Fox stand-in with the stunning Brooklyn Decker as the love interest (who easily out-acts Transformers 3′s Megan Fox replacement Rose Huntington-Whiteley). Also, the aliens haven’t been “learning our language through the World Wide Web”, so don’t speak all hip-hop like the Autobots (which is in this film’s favour).

However…

Firstly, this film is dumb. From the basic ‘science is evil, gun-toting army guys are good’ stance the film adopts early on, to the ridiculous dialogue. These ships have travelled the vast distance of space to land in our oceans, yet towards the end of the film when the big ship generating the forcefield suddenly appears near their Navy vessel, one character actually says “I didn’t think that one moved”. How did he think it got there in the first place?

Secondly, this film is US Navy propaganda. From the body-beautiful look of the Navy’s leading players, to the slow-mo hero shots of the retired Navy officers serving their country once more, proving that the Navy is such a good place to work and inspires such fierce devotion and loyalty that even the old and maimed will return to the line of fire to defend the good old U.S.of A. The AC/DC Thunderstruck playing loudly as the retired crew fire up the decommissioned Missouri to take on the aliens (which despite being an out-of-service museum piece still has a compliment of weapons and live ammo to fire at the enemy). Even in the field exercises at the beginning, the shots of the ships in the water to an accompanying AC/DC soundtrack are all there to glorify the US Navy.

And thirdly, the strong message is that all science is pure evil, and that only the physically strong can save the day. In fact the film is so strong in its message of physical superiority that you could almost feel you were watching a Nazi party promotional film about the Supermen and the Giants. The scientists are responsible for nearly bringing about the Earth’s destruction by sending a message to Planet G telling any possible life there that we are here.

Forgetting for a moment that any signal from Earth would take a phenomenally long time to reach our closest star, let alone an exo-planet whether the signal is five-times stronger or not, these aliens are much more technologically advanced than we are, so if they were looking for other worlds to strip-mine its resources, then surely they’d have been looking and found us by themselves already.

This is a big dumb blockbuster. Scoop your brain out and leave it outside the screen as you won’t be needing it for this film. It’s enjoyable enough if you don’t care about character, plotting, the science making sense, or plausibility. It’s fun if you don’t read too much in to it.

You see the writer was tired of reading stories where the women were subservient & simpering. This was the twenty-first century. Women were just as intelligent & capable of independent thought as their male counterparts. Why couldn’t they have a story where they made their own destiny, instead of polluting their minds with terrible reality shows & waiting for a Prince to come make it for them? The whole purpose of Fairy Tales had originally been to teach important lessons & challenge the norms that existed in society but nowadays people only ever saw them as an opportunity for romantic wish fulfilment where the hired help gets it together with the local Royalty, which works out well for the Royalty because then they don’t have to shell extra on a new cleaner!  As modern & free thinking as the world liked to think it was, it still clung to certain ideas of gender that were medieval in nature & none more so than in the comic book industry.

Now, being a writer of comics, which can be described as books where pictures tell the stories as well as the words, it would not be enough for the writer to conceive of the story of the Princess Adrienne, he would also need an artist to draw her into life. So the writer set out on a quest to find such a person. A quest that would take him all the way across the earth & back, or at least it would do if this wasn’t the twenty first century & we didn’t have the internet. In no time at all an artist was found. Adrienne was finally ready to escape from her tower & onto the pages of her very own comic book named Princeless. But things are not always so  easy…

Even though the artist could draw Princess Adrienne into life, it was not the life for which she was destined, so after a single issue the artist & the writer went their separate ways. The Princess Adrienne was then taken & put in a tower again. But this was no tower of captivity, this was the tower of the writers mind, which was inhabited by many other creatures such as elves, fairies, characters from Shakespeare plays & a few people that were like people we know in this world, but just different enough that the writer wouldn’t get sued for identity theft.  While these other characters left the tower on occasion to tell stories of their own the Princess Adrienne remained there, awaiting the day when once again she could tell her own story, but the writer had not forgotten her.

Time passed & the writer once again found himself with an opportunity to tell the story of the Princess Adrienne & another artist that could draw her out of the story & into the comic anew. However the world of comics was still no fairy tale where gender roles were concerned. Women had been misrepresented in comics for quite some time & the need for a positive female role model that would speak to women of all ages was more prominent than ever. So the Princess Adrienne rode out for a second time to save her sisters… But first she had to save herself.

As she rode across the lands with her new look the Princess Adrienne caught the eye of many a potential reader & not just the female ones either. The artist made Adrienne look & feel real as well as relatable & everywhere she went the Princess was complimented for her wonderful looks & positive mental attitude. Over the course of four issues Adrienne found herself rising to face many an insurmountable challenge, from faking her death to explaining the difference between a “Woman Warrior” & “Warrior Woman” she established herself as an important voice in comics that had the power to attract an entirely new generation of readers. After all, why can’t a Princess be charming too?

Now normally you would expect this to be the point where we say “& everyone lived happily ever after”, close the book & go to sleep, but this is only the beginning. However it’s the beginning that true happy ever afters are made of. You see the writer, the artist & all the other people involved in creating this story didn’t have a Fairy Godmother who could wave her wand & turn their Pumpkin of ideas into the stagecoach of success. It was something that they had to work at & while the hours were long & the work arduous, they had the story of the Princess Adrienne to inspire them. After all she didn’t believe in sitting around & waiting for Happy Ever After to happen to her, so why should they? You see Happy Ever After isn’t something that can be summed up in 3 little words & handed out to all & sundry. It’s something that you have to find for yourself & more importantly find within yourself, & when you find it, that’s what will set you free.