More Comics Please! Issue #1

More Comics Please! is a space for comic book reviews: think of it like a friend telling you about their latest read! Today’s comics are The Sprite and the Gardener, After Hours, and The Girl that Can’t Get a Girlfriend.

The Sprite and the Gardener is a great way to welcome the spring season! Full of florals and gardening, it’s good motivation for getting outdoors and spending some time with the earth and good friends.

What It’s About

The Sprite and the Gardener is about a lonely sprite looking for a place that feels like home and finding a gardener looking to rejuvenate the garden her mom loves and no longer has time for. At the heart of the book is a story about connection and working together to share the load and make life more beautiful.

What Worked for Me

Minor spoilers follow:

✦ I loved that this encourages people to reconnect with nature as a way of connecting with both yourself and others. I want more books like this that incorporate nurturing our environments and our people.

✦ The art is just so, so beautiful. The loose line work and the whimsical looks to the sprites really serve the story’s lightheartedness and joy. The colors really lend themselves to the book’s floral focus and playfulness. And the details of the flowers and plant life are a feast for the eyes.

✦ One of my absolute favorite things in the art is the embracing of sprites of all shapes and sizes! The character design overall was so lovely. I loved seeing so many kinds of sprite body shapes, skin tones, and outfits; really felt wonderful to see that in a fantasy comic!

✦ I also want to shout out the lettering of the title on the cover specifically; those graceful lines and embellishments are so perfect for this fairy-centric book!

✦ The panel designs and layouts played very well with the script and gave movement to the pages where it might have otherwise been still.

✦ The story’s portrayal of struggling to feel like you fit in was very relatable, and I liked that this was shown without relying upon a mean character. Sometimes it just takes a while to settle into an established community, and it takes a little effort on everyone’s end to meet each other in the middle!

✦ I loved the message of community support and encouragement in the book. I always enjoy a hopeful message about the ways we used to be more communal in nature and how that doesn’t have to be relegated just to the past. We can bring that spirit into our actions with the community around us! This is definitely a much needed message for any times, but especially during times where efforts to divide our communities are so hard at play.

What Didn’t Work for Me

The only thing that didn’t really work for me was the physical size of the book. It’s quite large at 12″ tall by 8.75″ wide, which really surprised me when I received my order! I like that you can really appreciate the details of the art this way, but I personally find it a bit difficult to focus when it’s this big, and it makes it difficult to bring with me outside my home to read, say, on the train.

Overall

I give The Sprite and the Gardener 4 out of 5 speech bubbles: I really liked it and definitely recommend checking it out!

I think it’s a lovely light read, great for all ages, and especially wonderful for those who like a bit of magic in their daily lives. I think a lot of people will appreciate not just the gorgeous art, but also the way the book encourages care for our community and environment.

How to Read It

Interested in checking it out for yourself? Here are a few ways you can get your hands on a copy!

The hardcover is already available for purchase, and the paperback version is coming out in just a week on April 4, 2023! It’s already available for pre-order in several places.

Hardcovers provide higher royalties for writers and illustrators, but a royalty is a royalty, so go forth knowing your purchase will support them either way!

Read This Next

If you liked this, check out The Magic Fish by Trung Lê Capecchi-Nguyễn or Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen!

After Hours is a fun read with an unexpected twist on a queer office romance!

What Worked for Me

✦ I really enjoyed the use of color throughout and the way the settings were illustrated. Very minimal, yet effective.

✦ The expressions were very well done and conveyed a lot without having to overexplain the situation. We can feel what the characters are feeling and thinking just by observing their body language, and I’m a big fan of that in comics!

✦ The use of office romance tropes in a queer situation was lovely to read, and I always enjoy a good excuse to come into contact with a crush! And I was pleasantly surprised by the twist! Unexpected in a fun way and a great blending of genres.

✦ While the panels are fairly straightforward, I thought they played very well with the script and genre. They were laid out in ways that smoothly and organically emphasized the actions, emotions, and characters in each of them.

What Didn’t Work for Me

My only complaint is that I want more! lol I would love to follow these characters in a longer story and get to see their dates and love bloom with all the shenanigans of their differences at play. Great story!

Overall

I give After Hours 4 out of 5 speech bubbles: I really liked this and would definitely recommend it!

It was a quick, fun read with a cute pair of queer main characters, and the art was expressive and served the story well. I think fans of queer office romances and paranormal romance will enjoy this.

How to Read It

Interested in checking it out for yourself? Head on over to Bowen McCurdy’s Etsy page for a physical copy– looks like it’s low in stock right now, so hurry while you can!

Read This Next

If you liked this, check out Sora & Haena by Jackbull or A Business Proposal by Guava Farm/Perilla, Narak, and Haehwa, both on the Tapas app.

Content Note: This book is fairly light hearted in its approach, but it does discuss topics revolving around low self esteem, depression, and anxiety.

What It’s About

The Girl that Can’t Get a Girlfriend is a humorous memoir about the author-illustrator’s experiences with getting a girlfriend for the first time, feeling over the moon with the relationship for a brief time, getting dumped, and then struggling to get over her for years afterward, coming to terms with her own self esteem issues and finding a way to move forward as her best self.

A Note

Before I get into the critique portion, I’d like to recognize that this is a very personal story for the author, so I want to be respectful of that experience while I discuss the things that worked and didn’t work for me with this story. I think that it’s a very vulnerable and wonderful thing to put your life on display for people to read, and I hope that my review here will be taken as a critique of the story and not of Mieri Hiranishi herself or her journey.

The Mieri I will be discussing in the review is the character, not the creator.

What Worked for Me

✦ The humor was the best part of this book for me. I love that the creator leaned into vulnerable moments and embarrassing moments alike, giving us a way to empathize with Mieri while finding a way to give us all a laugh.

✦ I loved the creator’s skillful touch with facial expressions! So many great moments in here showing off her ability to create in many styles. I know she talked about the creator of Naruto being an influence for her, and it shows in the way she chooses a quick scene here and there to demonstrate this.

✦ The art was a great mix of shoujo style glamour combined with a simple style of Mieri in a way of visualizing her self-deprecating humor! It was a great way to get a visual sense of how the character views others/the world and how she views herself, something that comes through strong in the script, too. I think it felt like a harmonious blending of shoujo and shounen styles, something that reflects the character’s love of androgyny and butch women.

✦ The panels, while pretty much what you expect from a manga, were laid out in a very easy to read format, and the creator used a wide range of perspectives throughout that gave the pages dimension and visual interest.

✦ The relatability of trying to find out who you are as a person and the world around you. I really connected with so many moments in here that showed Mieri struggling to understand social situations and trying to figure out who she is in this world and who she is a queer woman.

What Didn’t Work for Me

Minor spoilers follow:

While I understand that the ending of the story couldn’t come without the middle struggles, I definitely felt uncomfortable with the fixation of Mieri on getting back together with Ash. I think this is a very realistic aspect of relationships for some people, especially when they’re new to dating, but it’s not one of my favorite things to read, personally.

However! I do think that the creator portrayed the intensity of the feelings quite well and used it as a way to transition into the book’s final messages of self-love and acceptance. I think I personally would have been more interested in seeing this part of the book expanded upon rather than the hyperfocusing on winning back an ex.

Overall

I give The Girl that Can’t Get a Girlfriend 3 out of 5 speech bubbles: this was a good book, and I’d recommend giving it a read!

It’s a funny and relatable story about searching for love and working to love yourself in the ways that you want others to love you, something that I think will resonate with many people. Lots of people will enjoy the over the top, memeable moments throughout the book!

How to Read It

Interested in checking it out for yourself? Here are a few ways you can get your hands on a copy!

Read This Next

If you liked this, check out Sora & Haena by Jackbull on the Tapas app!

That concludes this month’s issue of More Comics Please! What did you think of today’s comics? Have you read any yourself? Are you itching to go check these out now? Let me know in the comments!

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