Black Panther: World of Wakanda Rocks My World

via Marvel

Way back at SDCC when Marvel announced Black Panther: World of Wakanda, a comic spinning off of the popular and critically acclaimed new Black Panther ongoing comic, I was immediately pretty hyped. Then it was revealed that the major focus of the comic would be the history of Ayo and Aneka, the badass former Dora Milaje duo who fell in love and rebelled against what they saw as T’Challa’s misguided rule. Then it was announced that the series would be penned by queer Black feminist Roxane Gay, and my hype levels skyrocketed to unchartable levels. Add in an additional story co-written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Pittsburgh poet Yona Harvey, and you have a recipe for my money.

The first issue in the new ongoing series was finally released last week, and it was everything I hoped it would be.

Spoilers for the first issue below!

Serpentine, I’m Not Mad, Just Disappointed

I’m making a conscious effort this year to read books by authors of color, and so one of the first places I turned to find new ones was the Diversity in YA blog. I was excited to see that Cindy Pon, one of the co-founders of the site, had just published a new book called Serpentine. I’d read and enjoyed Pon’s Phoenix duology several years ago, and I was eager to read another installment set in Pon’s China-based fantasy land of Xia.

Unfortunately, Serpentine ended up being an object lesson in the idea that a book can be everything you hope for from a diversity standpoint and still remain unsatisfying.

Spoilers for Serpentine below the jump.

On Kaptara and Diversity in Sci-Fi Comics

Another week, another review of another comic book from yours truly. I imagine you enjoy them, though, seeing as no one ever comments to say “Ugh, Saika, write about something else!”

I finally picked up all my comics on Sunday after three or four weeks of not making it to my shop, and boy does my wallet ache. Among my spoils was Kaptara #1, the debut issue of an original sci-fi story from Image Comics. Although I saw almost no hype for the book until, like, the day of its release a few weeks ago, it seemed like everyone on my Tumblr dash who had read it was giving it a glowing recommendation. Needless to say, I was happy to see that my shop still had a few left when I finally dragged myself there.

Spoilers for issue one below.