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Miguinti, Lupi – Bantam #1

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Bantam #1

I’m assuming that Lupi has put out more than two books, but I’ve only seen two, and the difference between this and her last book on forced female genital mutilation is stark.  “Duh” would be an appropriate response to that statement, and good for her that she has fun with comics as well as trying to inform the reader.  This one is all about the bad puns, so be warned.  Yes, it’s a Batman and Robin parody and no, the world probably doesn’t need too many more of those.  Things start off with Bantam on the trail of the Jerker, who is trying to shake and bake innocent civilians.  Bantam gets captured (and seems pretty ineffective throughout), Little Pecker (that’s his name, he’s the Robin character) gets smothered by Mother Hen, and we eventually get to the real villain.  I’ve spared you the puns; if that’s your thing you should pick this up and you’ll get your fill.  It does end up being funny at times, despite the best efforts of the puns to batter me into submission.  That “#1” on the cover indicates more to come, but it sure seems like the story wraps itself up pretty neatly.  It’s cute and occasionally funny, but your mileage may vary and the very concept will give you a solid idea if this is something you’d enjoy.  Oh, and I JUST now noticed that my last review before Thanksgiving involved a comic with a turkey for the main villain.  Huzzah for unintentionally picking a theme book!  No idea how much this costs, so I’ll go with the random guess of $2.

Miguinti, Lupi – Ngaitana!

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Ngaitana!

Female genital mutilation!  That’s the nature of the random review grab pile I have on my desk, folks.  Granted, I would have liked to have come back to reviewing after an exhausting election season and had something lighthearted and cheery, but the power of the random grab compels me.  This was originally attempted as a 24 hour comic and Lupi says that it ended up being more like 48 hours.  That’s fine, it probably looks a lot better this way.  This is historical fiction, taking place in Kenya in 1956 after the Brits attempt to ban female genital mutilation.  Crazy, I know, but this story is mostly about the young women of the time having a hard time accepting that fact and eventually doing the mutilating themselves.  Who’s right and who’s wrong here isn’t discussed, as this does an excellent job of staying a fairly straightforward piece of historical fiction.  One note for the especially squeamish: that cover talks about graphic images but it’s really only a graphic image, that of a razor being held up to a vagina.  I still don’t know exactly what gets cut during the mutilation process (although I can infer from the image in here) and, frankly, I’m good without that particular piece of information lodged in my brain.  This whole comic is up at Lupi’s website at the moment, along with other comics that (I’m only guessing here) have nothing to do with genital mutilation.  All told it’s a fascinating story and I appreciate the ambiguity, especially with something that damned near every thinking human being has long ago disregarded as an absurd and horrific practice.  No price, but let’s say $2.