marksutherland reviewed Goddess Mode by Zoe Quinn
Review of 'Goddess Mode' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A cyberpunk twist on the magical girl genre with some heavy social commentary and luminous colours. Madoka Magica meets the Matrix on acid I guess.
It's fair to say Quinn's experience at the centre of a certain culture war have deeply influenced the story, characters and world building. This book has a lot to say about how the internet has affected people for good and for ill and uses the fantastical cliches of the genre to personify trolls, those targeted by them, social networks and so on. On the one hand this lets her retell the stories of those crushed by doxxing and cyber-harrasment and repaint them as warriors who have survived their trauma and work to make a better world. However it feels like there simply weren't enough panels to let the world come together naturally, so there's a lot of "as you know bob" and sudden plot twists. …
A cyberpunk twist on the magical girl genre with some heavy social commentary and luminous colours. Madoka Magica meets the Matrix on acid I guess.
It's fair to say Quinn's experience at the centre of a certain culture war have deeply influenced the story, characters and world building. This book has a lot to say about how the internet has affected people for good and for ill and uses the fantastical cliches of the genre to personify trolls, those targeted by them, social networks and so on. On the one hand this lets her retell the stories of those crushed by doxxing and cyber-harrasment and repaint them as warriors who have survived their trauma and work to make a better world. However it feels like there simply weren't enough panels to let the world come together naturally, so there's a lot of "as you know bob" and sudden plot twists. A pretty common flaw in many comics though so easily overlooked.
The art and colours are what really makes this volume stand out though, it's often a bit chaotic and scrappy but that suits the the nature of the story. The characters always look great and flourescent colour palate makes for lots of attractive scenes.
However, the real kicker was that the digital copy of the trade I read finished with an ad for the re-print of Transmetropolitan which now seems like a dark (though almost certainly unintentional) joke.
