What's new in 2024? Same old, same old. A page-by-page commentary on the webcomic Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag, copyright them; also linked here, a diagram of an airplane riddled with bullet holes (unknown artist) and a painting by me.
The old Guardian gang back together! Except, err, that one. Apparently part of her anomaly was being forgettable. Probably good for her, or everyone would spend the rest of the comic talking about her but not in a good way.
But anyway. House on fire, classic superhero scenario, and the heroes are posing as a team, except they are pointedly not wearing costumes. P. cool.
Page 1
Looks like things are heating up oh no I'm sorry.
2
We covered this before, but now we see it in action: How Alison's incredible powers make her only marginally better at firefighting than humanly possible. She can't just plow through the building or everyone dies, she has to stumble and grope around in heavy protective gear with very limited hearing and vision due to all the fire. Maybe breathing smoke won't hurt her but I imagine it would lead to distracting amounts of coughing, and lighter clothes that would allow her more freedom of movement would certainly lead to distracting amounts of nudity. That she's not in any danger herself, that she can lift heavy things and even now that she can fly is helpful, but not all that much.
3
I don't know how to write a thesis but does it really involve this Scrubs-like degree of narration? (Hyuk hyuk.)
I spent all of Christmas alone except for a little dinner with my friend M on the 22nd, not answering emails, hardly talking in my homely chat room, and I still feel exhausted by social obligations. I'm saying I can relate to being "more busy than you'd think was physically possible."
And I get a feeling any indoors locale is not going to have space for Alison to push the limits of her flight speed.
4
Feels like another take on Lisa's battery-light bulb philosophy, but you know, I have found if you spend some time with people, they have a few thoughts they'll come back to on a weekly or monthly basis forever. One or two thoughts, or ten or fifty if you're lucky.
5
Girl, we need a montage. Really, any visual storytelling does need a montage to actually convey the drudging battery work without making it actually exhausting for the reader/viewer. (Alfred Hitchcock: "Movies are like life with the boring parts cut out.") But now I'm wondering how honest it is, if there really isn't a better way to convey what it's like to run around in the woods for a full year, cause in the end we, the reader, still do get to skip the boring part and yet soak in the moment of glory, cause that's satisfying storytelling.
And humans live in stories, we have stories to motivate us to get through reality, we use stories to form our understanding of reality.
6
Letting someone help you with hard stuff is basically the nicest thing you can do for them. Weird but true.
7
"We got this" seems a bit of a simplistic slogan, but then, it's maybe the sort of thing you'd cling to when you're too busy doing things to think. Reassuring yourself that in all the chaos, you trust that collectively, as a team, you will handle it. You choose to trust because it's all you have time for, because if it doesn't work you're screwed anyway, because you'll never be as powerful alone as the simple act of pooling your resources makes you.
8
Then suddenly people are falling from buildings.
I love Alison's pose in panel 6. She's like a five year old trying to act like she's in charge. Boy Ali gets in a lot of trouble over pretty faces. Boy trouble.
10
There has to be a better way to fly with strangers than hugging them. Maybe have him ride on your back? This might just be a part of Alison's massive flusternation of course.
11
I think Alison's "WHAT" is the only time anyone in the entire comic speaks in capitals. It's an unusual day for everyone.
12
You know Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now? Guy who exterminates a village because he wants their beach for surfing? There's a fun shot where he poses like a hero (hands a little lower on his hips than Alison previously) while everyone is is cowering in trenches and flinching from artillery shells going off around them, and Kilgore just doesn't have any reaction. On a scale from "nerves of steel" to "some kind of neurological condition, possibly involving limited reflexes or fear response", he's a solid ten, and I'd put Max at least a five.
13
I'd eat a Mocha Girl wait that sounds weird when I say it out loud.
14
There's a joke here how Rich seems smart to the bios just because he's an adult but that may be a little too silly.
You know who's uncomfortable talking about money? Rich people who want to hide how rich they are, only them. Don't let the Man keep you from useful discussions about sums.
I love it when stories use sums. Put a real figure on something like what a world class hacker charges for his time, or how much money you make from being an action figure, dangit! Well, those things could easily make a writer a look fool without very careful research, so when it's not important to the story to be specific about it, I can let it go. Though I really hate it when like a TV show does something like spending years avoiding giving an income figure to a character who's a TV actor. (Yes I'm looking at you, Friends.) When the writers should have every reason to know what they're talking about and the characters pointedly write notes just to avoid talking about money out loud just to train the audience to think it should be shameful, or because they think we can't handle it, that we can't relate to a character who makes a hundred times more than we do or whatever.
16, 17
It's very funny to me to walk in on people who think they're alone in a big house. I did it one time, one murderously cold, dark winter night in about 1995, when Doom was new and weird enough to be genuinely scary to us teenagers.
See what I did was walk over unannounced to my friend's house at the edge of the village. Must have been really bored to do that without even calling to see if he was home. But not only was he home, I saw, but home alone, sitting in front of the computer in the living room playing Doom. So I crawled in through the dog door out back and just stood behind him for like five minutes. . .
Good times. But anyway, good for Hector that he starts apologizing as soon as he's recovered. The way they last parted must have been sitting on the forefront of his mind every moment of every day since then.
18
Finally, they are friends again!
Apparently healthy humans have relationships where they fight and then repair, because they recognize they didn't mean the hurtful things they said and did, while other people think the relationships are ruined forever at that point. My method of conflict avoidance is to never say things that I don't mean, thus, I only ever get into conflicts because of misunderstandings and it's baffling to me why anyone starts saying things they don't mean when they're upset. But apparently y'all do.
19
I have noticed the Guardians almost always refer to each other by their superhero names. Mega Girl this, Moonshadow that, I think Ali has never called Hector anything but Pintsize until the previous page, even when she has been the unmasked one from the first page. So it seems significant Hector's calling Mary Mary.
I'd like to think neither of these kids has any idea what "high-rolling" is.
And why yes, some handsome genius, whoever could it have been.
21
Funny and sweet and thoughtful, this page has everything going on.
22, 23
The one time Hector's computer's voice recognition doesn't work. . .
24
How the tables have turned. In just a couple of pages, even. I keep being surprised by how dense the comic is. Heck, I figured it would take a week at most to reread the whole thing.
But anyway love how Alison just barely touches the tip of her toe to his cowlick.
25
There's an alternate universe where Max is a reporter and the Lex Luthor to Alison's Superman and it sounds amazing.
26
How psyched Hector, probably the single most well respected and trusted superhero among his peers, is for a joyride may be a hint about how rare the power of flight is.
In 2024, I'm resolved to teach myself to sculpt in Minecraft. It's just human anatomy, expression and body language, right, how hard can it be? No but I have a real problem with daring to try things I'm not good at and I'm going to try working on that. Maybe it will be half as difficult to do the next hard thing.
28
Might as well give in and accept that Hector never has any bad ideas ever.
29
Okay he's also a big gossip.
30
Clevin, also a good boy. There's an argument where he's weak and insecure because he pursues Alison so ineffectively, but I think that's overlooking a couple of things. First, just trying to talk to the most famous person in the world to me looks like a lower than normal amount of insecurity. Secondly, also related to the fame part, Alison is so ridiculously busy that you could probably run into her in the school hallways a hundred times over and not catch her at a time when she can spare a minute. Which is largely what's happening here. "Want to make plans for later?" "I'd love to but I have no time." Reader chimes in: "Jesus Christ what Nice Guy™, be more honest about your intentions!"
Maybe his intentions actually doesn't stretch further than trying to show a good time to the girl who saved his life? Me, as a movie nerd, I'd like what he's offering.
To not get too far in advance of the plot here, I shall just have a sensible chuckle at that "lifesaver"gag. I think John didn't even do it on purpose.
32, 33
Introducing Dr Gurwara, who doesn't in fact introduce himself but rather starts drinking, upsetting the students and making ambiguous denigrating statements about the field he's teaching. Friends I think this may not be a good guy!
I mean, he's most likely an agent of the Great Conspiracy (the gold tooth proves it, you know), and him being here means they're at least two steps ahead of Alison, so he's a worrisome malefactor. (The worst part of the comic being left unfinished, we had no idea how the heroes were going to defeat the Conspiracy, and in the end, they didn't.) But also, he's kind of a jackass. And to make it worse, he's not even unlikable! Clever, irreverent, very principled, very knowledgeable in his fields of philosophy and ethics. Stupid nuanced character writing.
You know Gurwara knows Ali probably feels worse about getting ol' professor Cohen fired than about anything else she's done since the took the mask off. Which is why he had to joke about it. To make her feel bad.
35
How would you prove the value of logic? Morpheus of Sandman tells us it's "no more reliable than instinct, myth or dream." People don't operate logically. But we can use logic, and then we can go to the moon. The value of logic is evident in all our works of the last several thousands of years. We live longer and healthier lives, with more freedom, more self-actualization and less running from tigers, thanks to logical thinking. Not only thanks to logic, nothing happens just because someone thinks it's logical, but partially.
That might not be the spirit of the question? But I think it's close enough.
36, 37, 38
A strategic game with black and white stones? I wish I knew how to play Go so I could comment on how this is or isn't like Go. I'm sure there are some similarities.
The lateral move would of course be to not play along with the game. Nothing in the rules say you have to play a stone at all, John. Yeah yeah nobody has time to think this through at all which makes it more a metaphor for life than for Go I guess.
Also did we mention Gurwara reads minds? With that "perfect solution" line it seems he wants Alison to know it, in classic villain fashion.
In context, clearly everyone's going gasp at Alison telling the teacher to fuck himself, but following the line of dialogue across the page it looks like one or two of the gasps come before Alison's line, and they're sarcastically gasping at the line about the serpent head of selfishness. Which makes me giggle.
And I think at this point the teacher really ought to rein in the one student completely dominating the discussion, but Gurwara doesn't even try to pretend he's there to teach anyone besides Alison. Bold for an imposter.
40
Now, though, once the whispers of "this class rules" are heard, it's too late for the reins. Maybe this whole exchange is quick enough it's not seen as a one-on-one class. I don't know enough about the pace of college learning.
41
This reads a bit different if you assume Gurwara is just literal. Maybe he is actually heartless? He's definitely old, like, probably much older than he looks. And indeed his purpose for appearing to Alison seems to be because he wants for "you", that is, Alison specifically, to see what her beliefs are when her she's under pressure.
(Seems to. Argh I want the comic to finish.)
Alison is going to school to learn, not for the grades, but yeah, she is animated by principles of fairness.
Very "I can accept that your approach to social interactions includes casual murder, but I draw the line at using the B-word" Community meme am I right. Nah it's probably more that respectful language is a thing Ali can help Dan work on but the whole "murder is bad" discussion is, rightly, above her paygrade.
And I like that he tries to respect her wishes. "I wasn't trying to fuck with you" is seven words that could make a woman fall in love with you.
43
I'd try the chess variant where queens can capture their own side's pieces if they're in the way, but I don't think it has a lot of legs in it. Daniel's feelings are the same as I had as a child who had more fun pretending chess pieces were missiles and making them go "pcheew booom" than I had playing against people; that the more powerful pieces matter more and should be the game's focus. The same feeling that made me fascinated by playing videogames with cheats on: power, simply. I used to daydream about shooting murder beams out of my eyes and exploding everyone in my sight, it's not exactly a big leap to boot up Warcraft 2 just to go "it's a good day to die" and have one guy kill the whole enemy army.
However, even at like, eight, I understood the pawns were necessary to give the game of chess its depth. I think Daniel is just way too comfortable talking about the little people like they don't matter. (The "little people" here means chromosomatically stable people.)
44
Like, the most powerful, most competent character is his favorite. Any fantasies besides power fantasies doesn't seem to exist in Daniel's world.
I like the little detail of Alison wondering if he has read his books yer and he's read them a hundred times over since they last met. The perspectives of an extremely, ridiculously busy person and someone in prison, respectively.
And here we go directly into the feelings again. These two kids are probably the most singularly tough and strong biodynamics in the world, and yet, so vulnerable.
46
One thing that comics are bad at is getting really up close. Here, all we get are silhouettes in far away, static shots. The art is trying to just get out of the way of the words, and that's maybe the best it can do, cause these words are making me cry at 4:30 in the morning. A movie would be very cool if it did the shot in the same way, maybe it's not a problem specific to comics, more visual media. I'm just thinking how a prose story could use a lot of words to get us inside the skin of either or both the characters but if the comic did that it would be seen as verbal diarrhea.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with you," she said, and it broke him all the way. Like a blade sliding in under the ribs all the way through his spine. He could almost see himself crumbling, collapsing as the upper half of his body came off. The reflex was to hide it. Can't cry in front of a girl. Can't cry in front of people. Alison was a different story, though. Even as the pain came out of him in a lone, irrepressible gasp the thought that came to him was not yet, as if he had seen where it was going, had thought one day, maybe, they would be that close. Her hand on his arm and now he was struggling to keep his boner down. Not that kind of closeness, even he could figure out there was something more important going on here. Something like being completely open and honest and vulnerable. Of all the things she could say. . .
47
See, now Dan's trying to match Ali's level of deepness, but with some tough guy philosophy instead of actual emotional vulnerability. These thoughts about little, shitty people who don't matter that are already crumbling under the assault of actually caring about somebody and he's already getting there, he's figuring out for himself that the things he has done are terrible and he's not okay and there's the crying and the hugging
Damn I love this comic.
I would not have the strength to seek out more human contact after that day, but Alison's just built different. (Literally.)
49, 50
Max is a very nice piece of shit. I mean that. He does everything perfectly here. It would be easy as a socially competent person to just overrun these two nerds and take charge, but he doesn't. It would be easy to, in the parlance of our times, lay claim to Alison, like, they're going on a date and he finds her intensely conversing with another boy, some sign of jealousy would be justified, maybe even expected, but he doesn't do that either. He leaves it to Alison to introduce him and Clevin to each other and explain their respective relationships to her in as much detail as she's comfortable, and only takes the merest piece of initiative (shaking hands and saying hi) when no other path through the conversation presents itself. Sorry to say, Clevin in this scene does not show any obvious boyfriend potential.
Dates must be nice if you have the kind of money to travel around the world. Me, I'm thinking of a bit of writing advice I was told that went "Cars break down. Have your characters be worried about their transportation failing and how they're going to pay for repairs." That made me think, I basically never write characters who are wealthy enough to have a car.
51
Actually, wandering the streets and/or public arts museums of New York seems like a fine date. Love the extremely tiny restaurant, which I have no idea how expensive it would be.
52
The ice cream coming out of your nose would get a lot of snot in it cause you'd have a cold all the time. I think I'd take the free daily breakfast just cause it's a lot less bother.
And yeah Max is a fundamentally selfish person who doesn't comprehend that Alison decides what she "wants" based on practical, utilitarian, humanitarian considerations, I think we all got it.
Must be awkward when you borrow a friend's apartment and then the house burns down. Unless the friend was in the fire? Who can tell if Max would care to mention that. No I'm not trying to be uncharitable to him, I really can't guess.
54
The important thing I think is Alison realizes the game was a trap. (And the relatable thing is she still tries to win the argument in her head.)
55
Not that dunking on Max isn't fun, but sometimes he makes it too easy. Such an ignorant rich straight white man thing to believe. We could make a little fun of Alison for thinking with her lady parts instead of fighting him but maybe it's more that she's trying to have a pleasant time.
56
There's a very involved joke you could make about the interconnectedness of humanity meaning Max and Ali owe it to each other to have sex, but Max goes for the light and breezy version instead and I respect him for that.
That's what I call an establishing shot. So many unique-looking people.
Speaking of unique looks, yesterday I wrote a scene with these ladies (the translucent one is the gray one's daughter and they recently met for the first time) that went like "I know it's not your choice, but I would like for you to be able to take pleasure in knowing that you make the world a little more bright just by existing and looking how you look." I thought I nailed that.
Of course it gets more complicated than that because only one of them have ever had bad things done to her because of how she looks. Which I think is core to a lot of the conflicts we see dividing the dynamorph community in the coming pages.
Also, love the expensive "danymorph" sign.
58
"Plus-sized" sounds a bit weird. Maybe it's a compromise arrived at after super-sized was taken by that dumb fake documentary and mega-sized was taken by Mega Girl. . .
"The world's strongest liberal arts major" could have been a good name for the comic TBH.
59
"Pollyanthromorph" is a fantastic insult. If some big rock guy called me that to my face I'd probably make him more upset because I'd be too busy appreciating what a great word he made up to care about his being upset.
And to be fair that introduction could have been shorter and less lecture-y. Well, everyone's trying to be maximally diplomatic and sensitive, I'm sure it's better to overdo it than not doing enough, but talking about how strong and heroic the dynamorphs are, well, something something survivorship bias.
(Okay, everyone except rock skin guy.)
Giant orange girl's cup is so tiny! It's actually smaller than Alison's cup, she has to have gone out of her way to get a baby cup just for the aesthetic. So rad.
Yeah, some bodies got it tougher than others, you aren't going to have entirely universal experiences even among this tiny group, but come on Vanessa. Carmen's ex was clearly a dick to her, what's the harm in letting her vent a little bit? And being excluded is certainly one thing you all can relate to.
61
And speaking of bodies, or rather, not. What word "can" we use to describe a person's material form, Tina?
I wonder about disembodied gas cloud people living in pressure tanks. (They show up more often in comic books than you might think.) When Tina started transforming, as she must have done, did she lose some of herself to the atmosphere before they got her in a tank? Does she grow back? Do vibrations make her orgasm every five minutes? Okay that last one was a running joke in Stormwatch, it's been done.
62
What is beauty? It sure is possible to have like a, societal beauty standard (largely Alison, but without freckles), but what does that mean? It means nothing to me. I don't know how to compare one person's looks to another's, I can only judge them by themselves, by their own merit. Don't sweat it, Amanda.
63
I want what they have: a table absolutely loaded with nice looking sandwiches. I bet you get the good stuff when you have your conference at the Hyatt hotel NY. (Guesstimation.)
Okay I was going to just make that little joke and gush over how immediately Amanda and Alison become friends and coworkers. But now I want sandwiches. Toast and jalapeno cheese and ham and more cheese and pickles and a little fresh bell pepper. . .gimme a minute.
(I've been whittling at this post for twelve days at this point.)
My mother's father used to take my cousin T and me on fishing trips. Now, I lived (and live) in the major metropolis of north Sweden, which already means farmland and forests both within five minutes' walk from my front door. So then we'd travel two hours up the river to get to my grandparents' tiny little town, and then drive for about five years (maybe more like three hours) on dirt roads to get into the "deep" woods - never in all the years we went there did I see one other car on the road - and walk a nonexistent path through a very soggy pine forest (carrying food, fishing gear, oars, life vests and a 5 horsepower outboard boat engine) to get to the lake, where Grandpa had a plastic rowboat in a little boathouse and a series of little shacks that he apparently co-owned with an old friend who we never met.
Anyway, then we'd drive the boat for an additional three years to get to the fishing spots. Apparently grandpa and my cousin thought this was all very great and worthwhile; I mainly enjoyed it as meditation exercise.
And to the point of the story, one year when we got there the boat was gone. Turned out grandpa wasn't the co-owner of the land so much as just getting to borrow it, and the guy had sold it to someone who felt the need to remove the boat and not touch anything else. We drove around a bit, I learned there were other people living not that far away from the lake, we ended up getting to rent a marginally less shitty rowboat that made the trip much simpler, which was not at all what gramps & c:o wanted, so then we never went back.
But just try and imagine the utter disorientation of the boat being gone. The discombobulation. The flabbergastliness. You think you're in about the most isolated place north of Eurasia's Pole of Inaccessibility and then it turns out people are running around doing things behind your back. That was a a huge surprise. Now if a big fish person jumped out of the water and demanded our fishing license I imagine I'd be crapping my pants to this day.
65
I picture Daniel being here, as the one dynamorphic villain we've really gotten to know. Getting wheeled around in those massive restraints, absolutely hating how everyone's talking in this kind, thoughtful, generous, super diplomatic manner. He miiight get some lectures about toxic masculinity.
Superheroes teaming up to make phone calls, paperwork and accounting, yay!
66, 67, 68
Ah, the fiendish serpent head of selfishness at last. . .you know, I'm finding it's not that fun to make fun of Max anymore once we find out his version of personal freedom includes being free to exploit the poor for labor.
69, 70
Such tired old capitalist fetishism, too. Yes Tara gets something out of her constant organ donation, probably mostly dealing with feelings of guilt and powerlessness, but (and this was a tired old cliché before the comic even started) having selfish reasons for helping people still means you're helping people. It doesn't work as the justification for doing selfish things for selfish reasons that people like Max would like it to be.
Love Alison leaving him in the dirt with that world-class zinger. "Why did you choose that?" Get wrecked Libertarian Lad.
So now it's nine months since I last worked on this, after not being able to think of anything to say about this page, and in the meantime it turns out the comic has gone offline and I guess this is the end of the reread. Ah well, I love so much of the parts I had left to commentate I'd probably not have much to say about it anyway. Now all that's left is the warm and glowing memories.
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