Hope Larson: Better Than Boobs

After the recent flap about Power Girl's anatomy and sartorial choices, comics creator Hope Larson wondered aloud (which is to say, on Twitter) about why "crap like the Stephenie Meyer bio and Power Girl's tits get all the press."

The simple answer is that sex and famous people are flashy, but as someone who covered both of the stories she mentions pretty extensively, I must admit she has a point. As ComicsAlliance has already spent a significant amount of time today talking about boobs and bad comics and what is wrong with people, I'd like to pause and recognize that for every ridiculous or disappointing thing that emerges from the comics world, there are just as many things of beauty and value that often don't get as much press.

Thus, we will now take a moment to discuss Things That Are Great About Hope Larson, and why she is better than boobs.

1. One time she made this totally awesome sketchbook by punching a hole in it, threading a red ribbon through it, and giving it to various artists at the MoCCA comics festival who each created art around it. Kinda like "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," but with more tongue.

2. She has an erotic art site called "Personal Ho" (NSFW), for those of you who would like to see examples of sex in comics done right, including a wonderfully surreal Flash comic called "Sex Rainbow" (NSFW).

3. She's got a new graphic novel coming out in April called "Mercury," which follows the connected stories of two girls in Nova Scotia, one in the mid-19th century, and one in the present. CBR has an advance review with preview images here. It sounds intriguing, and the cover is gorgeous.

4. She wrote a short webcomic called "Bear Creek Apartments" (illustrated by "Scott Pilgrim" creator Bryan Lee O'Malley) that starts out like a run-of-the-mill story about a lonely guy who meets a quirky girl, but somehow ends up a lot more like Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

5. She just opened an Etsy store where you can buy original pages from books like "Chiggers," and "Grey Horses," and even her lesser-known but lovely minicomic with Lucy Knisley, "Letters From the Bottom of the Sea."

6. Her contribution to Douglas Wolk's four panel convention sketchbook, below, which makes me very jealous of Douglas and is actually drawn in four sequential panels. Look again!

7. The extra online material for "Chiggers," her recent YA graphic novel about teen girls at summer camp, includes an official song written and sung by Lucy Knisley, and a separate online story called "Seances." If you're up for more web reading, her entire award-winning work "Salamander Dream" is also online in full.