Michelle Herbert reviews Strong Female Protagonist Book One…
Strong Female Protagonist is an ongoing web comic that has recently become a printed book after a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. The story follows Alison Green who is trying to lead a normal life after four years of being the superhero known as Mega Girl. Alison Green is now a college student, trying to find her place in the world, whilst trying not to be treated differently because her actions made her famous.
The theme of the story is about a girl who is just trying to find out who she is in a crazy world where some people have different levels of powers and abilities. She is trying to make friends in the real world who won’t judge her for her past or look at her differently. Alison has given up her mask and quit her superhero team after learning that she wasn’t really making a difference to the world as a whole. Alison is now a pariah in the superhero community but is learning to deal with the reactions from people around her.
Throughout the book we meet different people from both Alison’s college life and from when she was a superhero. It is an interesting dilemma as all of the people who received powers are all around the same age Alison is, Alison was 14 when she learnt that she now has super strength and invulnerability. A lot of the people from the super team The Guardians really enjoy the life they lead and fully embrace being a superhero, but Alison is looking for a different way of helping the way, she is helped in this by Patrick who as a telepath does not have many human relationships as it is hard to deal with people if you know their every thought.
The story is really well written and engaging it is asking a lot of really interesting questions about how the world works and whether you have a choice in making a difference or not. Alison feels like a real person and although as Mega Girl seemed fairly one dimensional underneath it she is very smart and cares a lot about the world and the people in it. Alison is surrounded by a family who love her, which has really shaped how she has grown up. This is also a book with a lot of action sequences which flow through the story without ever slowing it down.
The art work is excellent – you can really see the emotions on the characters faces. There is so much detail in every panel. Brennan and Molly make a good team and you feel like they really play off on each other, which can be seen from the commentary at the bottom of the pages. It really feels like they care about their creation and that they have a long thought out story which you can read online now. For such an engaging story with a lot of hard issues, Strong Female Protagonist is also full of humour which is appropriate as this is a book about teenagers just trying to find their place in the world.
Some of the questions which are asked in this book are,`What makes a superhero or a super villain?` and `Is it the power you received, the way you were brought up or even the way you view the world?`. Although the most interesting question which Alison asks is,`How can you trust super powered kids to save the world when they do not have a true understanding of how the world works?` There are probably many more questions to be found in the ongoing web comic which I can’t wait to read, and maybe a few answers as well.
Michelle Herbert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2vq4CudKRk&list=PL18yMRIfoszFJHnpNzqHh6gswQ0Srpi5E&feature=player_embedded
Originally published December 26, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
