Woman King
Written and Drawn by Colleen Frakes
88 pages, 5.5″ x 5.5″, $7 US
Here is a quintessential comic from MoCCA making its debut this year: Colleen Frake’s Woman King, a continuation on her take on fables and myth. Since her Xeric winning Tragic Relief, her work has gotten sharper and the scope of her storytelling keeps getting more complex. A recent graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies, Frakes finds herself coming into her own with Woman King giving us a distinctive style and vision.
This is a hero myth turned on its head about the nature of war. In the middle of this is a girl being raised by wild bears. The bears are depicted as normally fun-loving gentle creatures who are led by one bear to rid the forest of abusive humans. Well, all humans, actually, except for the girl.
There is a fascinating internal logic at play in Woman King. The bear leader’s message is kill or be killed. The girl, a sort of Patty Hearst among terrorist bears, is becoming wiser to her surroundings, finding evidence that the bears are no better than the humans, but her sympathies remain with the bears. In one sense, I am intrigued mostly by the relentless telling of this tale. The characters are so vividly rendered and the pacing is spot on. But, to be sure, there is a satisfying ending to this thoughtful little tale.
