YALSA top ten GNs 2012: Wandering Son

Wandering Son (Volume 1)
Written and illustrated by Takako Shimura.
Published by Fantagraphics (2011).

As a guy that owns...5 dresses, I can understand some of the uncertainty and fear of social stigma that Shuichi Nitori, the main character in Wandering Son, faces. However, if I'm wearing a dress it's at least partially because I'm trying to undermine gender stereotypes (and, yes, because a lot of boy clothing is really boring). Shuichi on the other hand actively wants to be a girl, which is a very different scenario, especially when you're ten years old.

This first volume of Wandering Son features Shuichi very slowly coming to terms with this idea. So slowly in fact that I don't think it's even explicitly mentioned until the second chapter. At the beginning he's kind of terrified by the idea, scared and embarrassed that other people might find out, and just really not sure what to do. Thankfully, he encounters other students who are either supportive, of a similar mindset, or both, and gradually begins to experiment with wearing dresses and other things.

The first volume also features an interesting comparison, as we meet one of Shuichi's friends, Yoshino Takatasuki, a girl who wants to be a boy. At one point while they've both dressed up and gone out, she starts her period (for the first time), which while it seems like it should be a horrible, awkward nightmare, somehow doesn't turn out that way. Either way, it does support the back of the book where it states that the characters are on the "threshold to puberty". I think the kids in this book are at the age where they start developing their own sense of identity, and I'm curious as to how they grow over the rest of the series. There are 14 more volumes, in which he characters age until they graduate from high school and head off to university, however, only about half of them have been translated into English.

Shimura says in the bonus manga in the back that her "characters are hard to tell apart, [her] backgrounds are too empty, and [she] has a million other flaws to overcome", but I think she's being overly self critical. Yes, there are a fair number of panels that lack backgrounds, but it never really bothered me, and sometimes the use of screentones or solid black or white as backgrounds actually manages to add to the scene by complimenting the emotions of the characters. As for the characters, they are fine, good even! It's a comic about 10 year old kids, and for the most part they seem to look like 10 year olds (I think... I don't really have much experience with them...). I'm not going to proclaim that this is my favourite art ever, but I've read many comics (this year) that have worse art than this, and apart from an awkward scene change or two, the art here generally works.

One aspect of the art that I did enjoy is the use of screentones. I guess part of this is that they are pretty common in Japanese comics, but decidedly less so in Western ones, and since I don't read as much manga I'm not as used to seeing them. However, their use on clothing is effective, giving the illusion of texture and colour.

I was just reading about the controversy surrounding the book When Everything Feels Like the Movies, a book about a young trans character, and the fact that there is controversy at all, let alone the situation surrounding the tragic events it was inspired by, kind of show why stories like that, and like Wandering Son, should exist. There are, unfortunately, still quite a few people who are homophobic or transphobic (amongst other things), and these people can make the lives of young people miserable.

There's a reason why suicide amongst LGBTQ youth is high, and thankfully there are groups who strive to improve the lives of those people and educate both them and the future. One thing that can help is providing youth, both those identifying as LGBTQ and those that don't, with material that shows queer lifestyles as normal. The last decade has seen a fairly major increase in LGBTQ characters in comics, and also an improvement from how they used to be portrayed. However, they're still underrepresented, and it never hurts to have a few more. So yes, I can see why Wandering Son was on YALSA's lists of top GNs, and I support it being there.

YALSA top ten 2007: Castle Waiting Volume 1

Castle Waiting (Volume 1)
Written and illustrated by Linda Medley.  
Published by Fantagraphics (2006)

I'd read some of Castle Waiting ages ago. What issues, I'm not sure, but I think I pulled at least three or four out of a dollar bin back when I was an undergrad (ie. forever ago). I remember liking it fine, though never bothering to seek out more (of course, I don't think it was even really that easy to seek out more before this collection came out).

This is a big, fat collection of comics, and it's kind of interesting to see how they were released originally. Medley originally self published the first few issues of Castle Waiting in the late '90s after receiving a Xeric Grant. Then in 2000 Jeff Smith's Cartoon Books released a few issues (who knew they published anything other than Jeff Smith comics?), then it was self published again, then Fantagraphics picked it up. Geeze. Maybe the weird and haphazard way this book was released (with many gaps) explains the kind of strange way that the series unfolds.

The first three issues retell the sleeping beauty fairytale, then all of that is completely ignored and we jump forward like 80 years or something. It seems sort of strange to me that you could read this series without the first three issues and you wouldn't lose anything. I guess Medley published her original story, and decided to just use the same title or something. I dunno.

There are then several issues that seem like they're what the series is "really" about. A pregnant woman arrives at the castle, which now serves as a refuge for various oddball characters. The castle is at this point a place where anyone can come and stay, though it appears that it's at the end of its life as there are few inhabitants and much of the castle is now abandoned.

We get introduced to the characters, the new woman wants to be the librarian in the castle, and then....seven issues of flashback telling the entire backstory of one of the characters. I'm not opposed to this, I'm not even opposed to the (multiple) nested flashbacks that are used in the story. And the story (about bearded nuns) is even good and enjoyable (I'm pretty sure I read some of these issues all those years ago). But these issues finish off the volume, and to me it really felt as though Medley had absolutely no idea where she wanted this series to go, or what she wanted to do with it.

However, none of this is to say that this volume isn't worth reading. I liked it! The world Medley has created is interesting, and I want to know the backstories of pretty much all the characters (a knight who is a horse, a weird birdman who runs the castle, a blacksmith who doesn't talk, a cook/cleaner and her son who don't actually seem that interesting until you actually hear their story in the second volume, a bearded nun, assorted demons, and the woman who gives birth to a somewhat monstrous child).

I just found the way it was presented kind of strange.

After reading this volume I went out and got the second, which had a vastly improved narrative structure. It still has lots of flashbacks, but they generally seem to be related to what's going on, or at least don't overtake the entire story. I felt as though I was learning about the characters while an ongoing plot was happening. Of course it also just stops. Like, seems like there are pages missing stops. I discovered that this is because it was released before the final three issues of this story were printed (or even drawn). Fantagraphics released a "definitive edition" that features another 70 pages of story, and is completely relettered (the lettering for much of volume 2 is, while not awful, not very good). You can buy the last three issues for $8, but it still seems super weird that the book was released the way it was, even if "it looked as if Castle Waiting was definitely over".