Monstress #6 Review

Writer: Marjorie Liu / Artist: Sana Takeda / Image Comics Over the last couple of years, I’ve been making it a habit to be aware of how female characters are presented in the panels on the pages of the comics I read. This means what exactly? On the surface level, this means I read and observe how girls and women folk are posed. How they stand and sit. Their action poses. Their relaxing poses. And, of course, if their body proportions are terribly out of whack, which happens more often than we’d all like to admit. I feel this is an especially important practice to have based solely on the fact that the majority of (mainstream) comic book artists and creative teams are mostly male and there’s countless offensives to think back on.

Enter Monstress: I was first intrigued by the creative team of Liu and Takeda. Second, I was drawn to the concept art and, third, the preview of the first few pages of the first issue. Like every other reader, my first visual of Maika was of her naked, chained, and obviously in a very vulnerable position. It was totally cringeworthy, but worth reading; I was not prepared for the chain of events that unfolded and kept me hooked. From day one from the first issue I’ve been hyperaware of Maika: of how she’s presented as person, as a woman, and – equally important – her sense of agency. Does she have any? Does she have any power, any say so over herself, her body, her destiny in this story? The first page blesses us with the image of Maika lying in a co…