It sounds so pubescent, like you’re about to say our protagonist is “on a journey of self-discovery” or even cringier, “blossoming into womanhood.” Ew. The loose genre designation of “coming-of-age story” makes me want to yack. The paneling and action are as dynamic as our heroine’s (though she may prefer ‘anti-heroine’) mood - sometimes cool and containtained, and other times rash and boundaryless. There is something inexplicably hip about there being no black outlines, other than Mandy’s cat-eye liner, ofc. And even I have a little crush on Claire - dichromatic undercut and strong social media presence? Swoon. Mandy’s thick black lipstick and stringy braids let us know that she is strong and rad as hell, even if she doesn’t know it all of the time. This being a graphic novel, the text of I Am Not Starfire is indivisible from the images, and Yoshi Yoshitani’s poppy, ebullient, visual side of the narrative is expressive and aspirational. Her true virtuosity lies in selecting swear words that create that slightly subversive edge that caters to a mid-teenager’s salty discontent, but pairs them with messages that even their mother can love, like, “guess what, nobody has it all figured out,” “yeah, your mom doesn’t ‘get’ you, but you don’t get her either,” and even “suck it up and take the S.A.T.s already.” She’s Judy Bloom for gen-z and, frankly, I’m a little jealous. ![]() As a person who now has those squidgy feelings buried under several years of retrospect, having a narrative that recreates that distant but familiar frame of mind with Vermeer-like accuracy is uncanny. If you know the works of Mariko Tamaki ( This One Summer, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with M e, Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass), you know that she creates from an emotional snapshot of what it feels like to be an angsty, disenfranchised youth. Mandy just wants to cut ties, move to France where no one gives a flip about superheroes, and settle down with a nice French woman - you know, the other American dream! Until then, she can skip class, suck down her ostentatiously specific frozen latte order, and deny she has a crush on the captain of the soccer/swim team. ![]() Remove mom being a super-babe from the equation, Mandy is your average, hormone-addled, teenager whose spirit is being stifled under the wet blanket of familial expectation. You don’t have to be the emo daughter of a solar-powered, single-mom Princess from the Vega System to relate to Mandy in Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani’s I Am Not Starfire. She’s not taking the S.A.T.s, she’s not going to college, and she is NOT going to be Starfire. She’s going to figure out her fate through the process of elimination. Growing up, people expected her to be just like her celebrity, superhero mom - develop powers, maybe take an internship with the Justice League, wear a bikini, but there is no freaking way any of that is going to pan out, so what’s a conspicuously powerless goth girl to do? Take the S.A.T.s so she can go to college and major in being ordinary? Screw that. ![]() Not only are the possibilities not endless for Mandy, but narrowing. ![]() But now, suddenly her every move seems cumulative and consequential. One week it might be “marine biologist” and the next it would be “unicorn,” and both would feel equally possible. As a kid, you could change your answer on a whim and grown ups would laugh. In highschool, what was once an innocuous adult-child conversation starter - “what do you want to be when you grow up” - becomes an anxiety inducing and unwelcome probe. By Lisa Gullickson - We meet Mandy furiously dying her roots from their naturally fiery orange to a positively pitch black.
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