Tagged: Brennan Lee Mulligan

Probably everyone I know has that stack of books in their home just waiting to be read. You know, that stack of books that you bought at an event, or saw at the bookstore, or a friend gave you as a must-read! Well, my stack has grown to become an amorphous blob of books, overtaking my apartment like an alien virus. It’s about time I get cracking some spines open.

So, I started with Strong Female Protagonist http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/, which I admittedly was first interested in totally based on the name. Because, it’s about time we saw more female comic leads. Like I always just started saying, if the Big Two won’t provide, go to the indie comics!

SFP is a web comic (yes, you can read it for free! but since I spend a good chunk of my life on the subway unground sans Internet, I just bought the book to get me started) starring Allison, a former superhero who is just trying to figure out who she is with, or even despite, her powers. We follow Allison as she interacts with the world and the people around her, some with powers and some without.

This story, by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag, pays off in that Allison’s questions aren’t specific to a superhero with powers or even to a woman. They apply to everyone and anyone could relate to this story. It was a fantastic read, and I immediately jumped right onto the web to read what happened next.

The downside of reading it was the knowledge I had waited so long to read it. I had heard of Strong Female Protagonist for years but failed to follow through on actually reading it. Everything we read affects who were are as people, so I can only wonder who I would have been if I had more strong female characters in comics.

At least, I’ve learned my lesson. That stack of books is going to shrink, even as I continue to add to it.