Random Rave: Rachel Hartman's Belondweg Blossoming

Rachel Hartman's fabulous comic book Belondweg Blossoming is so wonderful you should rush right out and read it today. It is, sadly, out of print, but available at libraries and many used booksellers. It's set in the generic 13th century British fairy tale milieu, but the heroes do the sorts of things I find heroic — take care of each other; accept the more difficult path for the greater good; face up to lies told and return to straighten things out. One of the principal themes is what women's lives are like when they can't own property. A truly life-changing gift for a girl approaching menarche: I think it's important for all women to understand how far we've come.

This reviewer provides a much better description than I can. Hartman was drawing at GirlAMatic for a while, so you can admire her excellent drafting and elastic fiddling with narrative conventions in Return of the Mad Bun