Media Roundup: Sequential Art

[forestofglory]

Here’s another Media Roundup after not months and months! Hopefully I’ll be reading and watching things other than fic a bit more often and thus post these media roundups more often than I was.

I seem to have gotten into the habit of reading a lot of graphic novels in December and January. I currently have a big pile out from the library – and I’ve read a few of them, and hopefully will get around to even more of the pile.

Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology by Angela Hsieh— A very charming graphic novel about two girls on an adventure. Featuring charming art and very cute geo fauna! (As a Mandarin learner I did find the almost but not quite hanzi characters a little bit frustrating)

The Pale Queenby Ethan M. Aldridge—Another YA graphic novel, this one featuring an f/f romance. I really liked the fae in this book – they were a good mix of beautiful and scary. The art is also lovely!

Crush of Music— I’m still watching this very slowly, the subtitles have mostly been better for the last few episodes –so that’s nice. I’m enjoying seeing Liu Yuning and Zhou Shen interact in this – at one point they played the kazoo together!

Various Batman ect comic—So I mentioned in my 2025 media review post that I accidentally acquired a new fandom, that fandom is batfam. This is embarrassing for me because for years I've been prone to what R calls “the Batman rant” where I complain that punching people in the face is a dumb way to reduce crime rates. Plus I just feel like superhero comics are a space that's pretty hostile to me and my values. But apparently if you give me fic about a family of 3-8 adopted siblings finding each other/bonding and don't make me think too hard about the moral foundations of the universe then I'm willing to suspend my moral disbelief.

Anyways I got sucked in enough to be curious about the source material and have been reading stuff on hoopla. I'm fairly impressed with their comic reading interface too, it has a nice flow. (It doesn’t play well with my RSI issues but then neither does turning pages) The actual stories vary in quality, but some of them are surprisingly good. Even the not very good ones are surprisingly more-ish. I’m bringing a lot of emotional investment in these characters from my fic reading which also helps make the comics more engaging.

The Cross-Dressed Union—I thought that if my media theme at the moment is comfort that I should really start a new crossdressing girl drama since that's a big comfort trope of mine, So I asked around for recs and started this drama about an arranged marriage between a crossdressing woman and crossdressing man. It sounded fun but so far I’m pretty meh about it. I think my biggest problem is that the ML is the main character, and for these kinds of stories I prefer more focus on the FL. Also it's not doing enough with gender

Comments

[anne]

The Kiddo who visited recently recced me Taproot: it's a graphic novel, very short and very good.

[forestofglory]

Hold placed! Thank you!

[anne]

lmk what you think!

[forestofglory]

I'll try!

[sonia]

I loved this, thanks for the rec! The author's note at the end was the perfect chaser, too.

[anne]

Hurray! The teenager will be pleased!

[sonia]

Placed a hold at the library for the two graphic novels, thanks for the recs! (And Taproot, too, thanks anne!)

[forestofglory]

yay! Join me in having piles of graphic novels checked out of the library!

[sonia]

\o/

[sonia]

I ended up returning the two longer ones unread because they felt overwhelming, but Taproot was awesome!

[forestofglory]

Oh good! I still haven't gotten to Taproot (my pile of graphic novels remains tall even though I've read a bunch more since the original post) but this is making me look forward to it more!

[katzenfabrik]

Oh, I wondered what your new fandom might be, and I was not expecting bat-anything! I see what you mean about it, though. I'm not currently big into any comics fandom, but I have read a few batfam fics over the years when recced and it's usually a very fun time.

The very thought of tol & smol nephews playing kazoo together is making my day, thank you. :D

[forestofglory]

It's not a fandom I would have expected to get into either! Both because of what I talked about in my post and because its not Chinese. Though it is doing some of the same mentorship/found family stuff that I love in wuxia -- the bat fam are basically a marital arts sect. Plus it has been very nice to read a ton of fic that's not focused on romance.

The tol & smol nephew interactions are my favorite thing about Crush of Music!

[merit]

I got into Western comics via the Runaways however also got hooked on the batman (oof, many many years ago now). I started reading some of the more recent Nightwing comics last year after several years away. Any particular runs you like?

[forestofglory]

I've just been reading slightly random things based on what people talk about in their author's notes and what's on hoopla. Which has mostly been stuff form the 90s. I read all of Young Justice -- that was fun!

The only recent thing I've read was Shadow of the Batgirl which was cute.

I'd happily take recs for comics to check out! Though I'd avoiding the most upsetting bits (sorry hoopla rec algorithm but I really don't want to read A Death in the Family) At some point I will probably explore ways other than hoopla to read comics)

[sonia]

I'm not in batfamily fandom either, but I did run across this really well written story a while ago. clean it like you mean it by WynterSky. It gets more violent than I'm generally comfortable with as it goes on, but I think it is trying to address some of the moral issues you mentioned.

[forestofglory]

Thank you! I read that one and liked it, but now I don't remember what I thought about the way it addresses the moral issues.