Final Recent Fairy Tale Reimagining Awesome

Previously: Rapunzel offended Mother Gothel and got locked away in a giant tree prison when she found her birth mother!

Also: Met a strange guy named Jack with a lucky bean and a goose he's waiting to lay an egg!

And then: She and Jack had wild adventures on their way to rescue Rapunzel's mommy, saving the day for several folks downtrodden due to Mother Gothel's stranglehold on growth magic!

Also, she fought a "sea" serpent in a lake, and got a pickaxe named Inga that got talked up as capable of breaking "the unbreakable." Yes, this is important.

So sit back, relax, and get ready for the last chapter of Rapunzel's Revenge, "The Shindig."

Yet More Recent Classic Fairy Tale Re-Imagining Awesome

Okay, previously on . . . it started getting really cool with the western elements starting to come to the fore. Also, new character Jack with his goose named Goldy debuted, to much hilarity. Rapunzel beat up a (somewhat inept) gang of kidnappers and rescued the kidnappee . . . kidnapee? Kidnapped kid. But the kid's father decided it was cheaper to arrest Rapunzel and Jack than pay them any reward money, so they had to escape a hanging. Rapunzel doesn't want to keep thieving, so pledges that as soon as her mother is rescued, they'll give everything back, and makes Jack promise not to steal anymore. Of course, first they have to rescue her mother from Gothel. Oh, and Jack bestowed the nickname "Punzie" on Rapunzel. She . . . didn't like it.

So now begins the third and pen-ultimate chapter, "Banditry in The Badlands."

More Recent Classic Fairy Tale Re-Imagining Awesome

So previously, Rapunzel grew up in Mother Gothel's villa until her twelfth birthday when she learned her real history and got put in a prison on top of a tree for four years, after which she escaped with the help of her over-long hair. She managed to dodge the interest of a pompous popinjay who would have treated her badly and set off on the path to adventure.

That was the first chapter, and like I said, it was nice and all, but maybe not that awesome. Not yet. The second chapter, "Rustling up Some Grub," is where things start getting interesting. New characters are added, more action and adventure happens, and we (and Rapunzel) start learning a lot more about the world.

Recent Classic Fairy Tale Re-Imagining Awesome

Retelling classic stories is a practice as old as the stories themselves. Classic myths and fairy tales, being an oral tradition, were told and retold with minor changes and such for millennia before writing was invented. However, mostly, these retellings were aesthetically similar since, you know, everything was a period piece back then. Not until relatively recently did bizarre reimaginings occur. Reimaginings, is that a word? Well, it is now.

The most popular reimagining setting is in outer space, because space is cool. Somewhere behind that is the western. Which is where we're going with today's little patch of ridiculously awesome, Rapunzel's Revenge, by Shannon and Dean Hale and drawn by Nathan Hale (no relation). In case the title doesn't clue you in, it's a retelling of the classic story about Rapunzel, the girl in the tower with magically long hair. Only it's set in the wild west.

And is awesome.

Classic Video Game Adaptation Awesome

I was going to do something special but then life got in the way. It happens, and it's not like this is my job, just something I do every Wednesday for fun.

I was never sure if I would do manga or not, but it turns out, yes, I will.

And I've got an unofficial "awesome females in comics" theme going this month, so I thought I'd continue.

The Metroid franchise is a meandering game series of exploration and massive damage starring the quintessential cool video game bounty hunter Samus Aran. Her most recent outing, Metroid: Other M was at best mixed. It didn't have the exploration, it was too linear, it wasn't that good a game, it told its story clumsily for the most part, and it turned a cool, philosophical stoic tough chick into a shellshocked, emotionally traumatized puppet too easily subjugated by someone she highly respected who isn't even her superior officer and should be grateful she's there to rescue him . . . er, that aside, we're not here to talk about the games, we're here to talk about "The Metroid Manga" by Ishikawa Kenji.

Recent Near-Superhero Awesome

Maybe I'm just still on a "girl-power" kick from last week, but immediately after posting about 15-Love, I remembered another really cool comic that came out in the last decade starring an awesome girl main character. Or maybe it's just The Avengers hoopla and Joss Whedon related saturation from the movie, but this week, we're gonna talk about one of his first works for comic books, 2003's Fray, by Joss Whedon (words) and Karl Moline and Andy Owens (pencils and inks, respectively).

Recent Non Super Hero Awesome

I don't know why, but good stories for girls are not always easy to find. I mean, okay, I know why, but I'm not gonna get into it That's not the kind of discussion this blog is here for. But still, good stories for girls are rare, and good comics for girls sadly rarer. Rare-er? More rare. So when, last year, Marvel comics put out a three issue mini-series that was pretty much meant to cater to a female audience, it was a surprise, even though it had been announced several years prior. That it was also a really good story was also a surprise, and a nice one. In the past few years, however, there has been something of a more concerted effort to create stories for girls about girls, which is great. That they are producing these stories for girls about girls that are also good stories is even better. Which brings us today to 15-Love by Andi Watson (writing) and Tommy Ohtsuka (art).