The second volume of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s ongoing series Monstress is up for a Hugo Award this year for best graphic story, just like volume 1 was up for a Hugo last year, and volume 3 (due out this September) will probably be up for a Hugo next year. This series is just that good.
Volume 2 neatly contains the second arc of Maika Halfwolf’s story. With the Ancients, the Cumean Witches, and the entire human Federation after her, Maika travels to the pirate-controlled city of Thyria and catches a ride to the Isle of Bones. Maika’s late mother discovered a secret there years ago, and now Maika is following in Moriko’s footsteps, trying to find out why she has the spirit of a long-dead demon inside her, and if there’s any way to get rid of it.
Meanwhile, the Monstrum sharing Maika’s body has secrets of its own…
If you haven’t read Volume 1 (which you really should anyway), here’s an extremely brief summary:
The Ancients (immortals with animal forms) are trying to regain some of the power they’ve lost over the centuries. The Arcanics (a crossbreed of humans and Ancients, some with animal features, some completely human-looking) are trying to survive persecution by the human race. The Cumean witches (a subsect of the human race with psychic powers) harvest priceless lilium from the bones of Arcanics (or Ancients, if they can get them) and control the human Federation from behind the scenes. And the Cats are…well, cats. Felis domesticus, but with human speech and mannerisms, plus poetry, secrets, and a very high opinion of their place in the scheme of things.
Five years ago, something happened in the city of Constantine that killed thousands of people. No one knows what kind of weapon could do that, but everyone wants it. And it all has something to do with Maika.
And then there’s Maika herself, who doesn’t give a damn about any of it. All she wants to do is find out what was done to her before/during/after Constantine (there are large blanks in her memory), what really happened when her mother died, and how she can separate herself from the Monstrum before it eats everyone around her. By which I mean Maika eats everyone, since the Monstrum’s hunger is now a part of her as well.
Maika is the kind of bitch that comes from having nothing but horrible things happen to you your entire life. Persecution, losing her mother, torture, slavery, you name it. And it didn’t help that Moriko was the type of mother who put her child through a lot, all in the name of making her “strong”. And now Maika is starting to learn that she may have been a pawn in the long game her mother was playing.
It’s no wonder that Maika spends most of her time pissed off and keeping everyone at a distance. Or at least trying to appear that way. She does care, about a very few people, and she tries to protect the few friends she has left over from childhood, and her traveling companions, the fox-girl Kippa and the “nekomancer” (hee) cat, Master Ren. Caring doesn’t stop her from doing some pretty shitty things though. There’s a scene where she sends Master Ren off to a brutal interrogation as payback for a betrayal in the previous volume, even while Kippa is crying for them to leave Ren alone. The exchange between Maika and the two friends responsible for the interrogation sums up both her attitude, and the type of person who can call Maika a friend.
Maika: Have your guard take the little fox out for lunch. She’s…sentimental. And if anything happens to her…he dies.
Seizi: Phylleas? You looking to die?”
Phylleas: Not today, boss.”
Seizi is one of the Ancients, a now-retired pirate and old family friend of Moriko. And he makes a good segue into my favorite part of Monstress: Sana Takeda’s art. It’s gorgeous. Ancients like Seizi are the kind of fantastical anthropomorphic characters I adore: not cartoony representations, but a skillful combination of a realistic animal with human expressions. Tigers in suits, wolves in ceremonial dress (or half-naked in a fantastical garden, surrounded by their harem), lunatic foxes, it’s endlessly beautiful to look at. Lordy, that one panel where Seizi is talking about Moriko’s death, it absolutely took my breath away.
Some of the art in this volume feels a little more…rushed, than in Volume 1? A tad simplified? Slightly more manga line-art than in the first volume. But the color scheme is still lovely, the design work is still sumptuous (right down to the clothing, the buildings, and even the etched wine glasses), and Takeda always lavishes some of her best work on Maika herself. Every issue has at least one full-page picture that should be framed and hung in a gallery somewhere. And I love every bit of this artist’s take on pirates.
Story-wise there’s a lot going on here. I think for every question that was answered in this volume we’re given several more to chew on. I understand that things get even more convoluted over the next few issues, and we haven’t even started to address why Tuya, Maika’s very best friend in the whole world, is trying to help the Ancients catch Maika. Seeing how hard it is for Maika to trust anyone at all, the fallout from that one is going to be interesting.
