5 Female Led Comic Books You Absolutely Should Be Reading Right Now
It is a great time to be a comic book reader and an even better time to be a fan of women kicking butt in those great comics books! Every Wednesday the shelves are filled with a skrillion new, glossy editions… so which ones should you be reading? We’re so glad you asked. These are our picks of the female-led comic book titles that you need to keep your eyeballs on in 2016.
Kamala Khan is a muslim teenager living in Jersey City. She also happens to be the best new hero Marvel has produced in years. The spiritual successor to Spider-Man for modern times, she struggles with school, family, relationships, and power-mad super villains on the other side of the Hudson. The idea of a young girl struggling with her strict Muslim parents while trying not to embarrass herself in front of Wolverine would have sounded like a pipe dream twenty years ago. Ms. Marvel firmly established itself as a beloved title in 2015, but with the shake-up of continuity and re-launching of all books from issue #1, new fans should take advantage and sign up for new adventures with Jersey City’s Avenger.
There’s a solid chance that in the middle of reading this, the DC universe will be rebooted yet again, but as it stands now Batgirl is some of the most fun you can have with a comic. For many years, Barbara Gordon has been the former Batgirl. She’d been shot and paralyzed by the Joker and had taken up the mantel of Oracle, providing other heroes with intel and computer hacking help. In 2011 DC reconfigured and relaunched their entire line of heroes and VOILA Barbara Gordon was given a revolutionary surgery and returned to her masked crusader ways. The real fun started with a 2014 soft reboot that saw Batgirl as a very modern superhero who takes full advantage of social media. She has a DIY costume and, despite the lighter attitude, some real issues at the core of her character. Anytime is a good time to jump on board for some great writing and really distinct art!
To describe Squirrel Girl as a marginal character would be quite an understatement. A fun side-note in Marvel’s cannon, Doreen Green has the proportional strength of a squirrel, the ability to communicate with squirrels, and a tale… a squirrel tale. She was created in 1992 and for 22-years made fleeting appearances in fun mini-series. This all changed in 2015 when Ryan North and Erica Henderson brought her bouncing to life in her own solo series. The book quickly developed a nutty fan-base (sorry [not sorry]) and gave Doreen a sandbox of heroes and villains to play with outside of the regular continuity of Marvel. Like Ms. Marvel, she has been relaunched and we can’t encourage readers to jump on board the new series quickly enough. She has a squirrel sidekick named Tippy Toe for goodness sake, how can you say no!?
This is a brand new comic from Brian K. Vaughn who is best known for the insanely amazing series Saga that, if you haven’t read it yet, you MUST. It is also not associated with either Marvel or DC. It’s only 4 issues deep so it will be easy to catch up on the mysterious adventures of four 12-year old newspaper delivery girls living just outside of Cleveland. It would be hard to reveal much without giving away some of the fun, but it goes into an unexpected sci-fi place that makes the wait for each new issue borderline unbearable. This is a train that is just rolling out of the station and we highly recommended you hop on for the ride.
This one is a splendid new title that shows how modern comics can mix old ideas with new ones to create something completely different and fun. Devil Dinosaur is an old, rarely used creation of Jack Kirby, and like Squirrel Girl he would pop up every now and again but not for long stretches. Oh, also he is also an actual giant red Tyrannosaurus Rex. This comic also just recently started and it is already unlike anything else in the Marvel lineup. Young Lunella Lafayette is a preteen genius who is already light years beyond what school can teach her. She discovers an artifact that rips open a portal transporting Devil Dinosaur into the modern world. They become best of buds while trying to figure out why this artifact is so important and how it can prevent Lunella from becoming an Inhuman. A girl and her dinosaur! the series you didn’t even know you wanted desperately until now!
Are you guys reading any of these yet? Any we missed that you love? Let us know!
