My First Comic/Manga

[leikomgwtfbbq]

If you wanna get technical about it, my first comic was actually the Sailor Moon manga. (If you don't, then it was a Crow spinoff series that I have long since forgotten the title of.)

It's still my favorite manga to this day, and it had a surprisingly profound impact on my life and outlook on the world, I now realize. It was actually what taught me to respect and accept LGBTQ* people from a pretty young age, because the Outer Senshi and the Starlights were just way too badass; if they were that cool, then they couldn't possibly be rotten evil sinners, so I decided LGBTQ* people must be awesome. Logic!

Sailor Jupiter was always my favorite of the Senshi (with Pluto a very close second, and everybody else tied for third) and she's still one of my heroes to this day, even as a grown woman.

What always appealed to me as a kid (and now) was that Mako-chan was equally girly and tough. Some people think that you have to be one or the other. Some may think less of you for being either mega-girly or mega-tough. Sailor Jupiter was both a fighter and a girly-girl, and never portrayed as any less of a girl for either trait. She just was, and that made her inspiring to me as a kid, because I liked super-girly things like tea parties and pretty dresses, and I also liked playing with GI Joes and toy guns, but people were always telling me to pick one or the other because I couldn't like both.


Here's some Mako-chan being both super-girly and badass (and I deeply apologize for the two different formats--they're all I had):

Girliness:
(read left-to-right)






Badassery:
(read right-to-left)


Mako-chan body-slamming the monster of the week... untransformed! with her bare hands! This was in her first chapter, too! She didn't even know what she was doing--just that she was tricked and misled, and she was pissed. Don't fuck with Mako-chan's dreams!


(And a silly anecdote about How I Got My First Manga/Comic: I broke my foot in seventh grade, but I actually didn't realize it was broken, because it was just a hairline fracture. I couldn't see the broken bone or a bruise; all I felt was pain. So I stayed off of that foot for about 48 hours. My mom asked me if I wanted to go to the bookstore that weekend. I replied, "No, I think I'll stay home. My foot hurts." Well, Mom knows that I never miss a chance to go to a bookstore, so she immediately dragged me to the emergency room to get my foot looked at, because it must have been something serious if I didn't feel like going to look at books.

So we waited for about six hours, during which my mom popped out to the bookstore and asked the clerk if they had "anime stuff," because she knew I liked anime in general and Sailor Moon in particular. He directed her to the manga section and she randomly picked out a volume of the Sailor Moon manga--the one where Chibiusa turns into Black Lady. But I couldn't choose any pictures from that volume that would make sense standing alone, so I decided to squeal over Sailor Jupiter instead.)




TL;DR: Sailor Moon was my first comic (technically), I love it to this day, and Sailor Jupiter is still my hero.

Comments

[shanejayell]

Love the art. :D

[biod]

"With my high heels I'll punish you"? Kinky.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

I kind of wish Mars had eventually wound up attacking someone with her high heels, just because it would have been awesome. Sadly, all we see her using is fire attacks and her inborn ESP.

[superfangirl1]

Sailor Mars can make almost anyt accessory into a weapon.

[marco]

BSSM was also one of my first comics~! My uncle had a lot of golden age comics when I was growing up, but X-Men was the only thing I ever actually read. But a few years later, when I buy my first comic, it was Sailor Moon! (I also got it with MKR and Parasyte in the Mixx thingy.)

I will never stop loving Sailor Moon. And I am always trying to convert people, and the characters are a huge reason why. I recently got my boyfriend into it (and magical girl stuff in general), and he's really attached to it now, and I'm glad I could share that with him.

Sailor Moon taught me a lot too when I was growing up, and it's taught me a lot more since I've returned to it. It's always going to be one of my most favorite things ever, and that's a main reason why.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

Same here! I've been a fan of the show ever since I was a little kid, picked up the manga as a preteen, and I still love it as a grownup. I plan to introduce it to my niece at some point.

It's given me so much in my life, and I honestly think I'd be a lot sadder and lonelier without its influence, because there are a lot of lessons I probably wouldn't have learned and taken to heart at a young age, lessons that led me to being a better person as an adult (like respecting LGBTQ* folks, extending friendship to everyone no matter who they are, and ~*feminism*~!)

[skjam]

Ah, Sailor Moon, and Jupiter is indeed neato!

I'll be doing a "my first anime" post a bit later...

[leikomgwtfbbq]

Neat! I look forward to it!

I think my first anime was that thing about the little pink sea monster thingy. I can't remember the name of it or what it was about, but I'm pretty sure it was anime. I asked to rent it every other weekend when Dad took me to the video store.