Female Force: Michelle Obama
Written and Illustrated by: Bailey, LaBelle, Davie, Reed, Davis
Released by: Bluewater
After having read the Caroline Kennedy comic my faith was restored in Bluewater’s biographical series. I was particularly excited that this issue on Michelle Obama was written and drawn by the same duo that did the Caroline Kennedy series. I hoped they would be just as objective at depicting Michelle’s life as they were for Caroline’s life. And for the most part they did. But…the colorist in this issue is different than the Kennedy one and frankly it shows.
The story begins with the obvious starting point…Obama winning the presidential election and becoming the first black president to take office. And then the story jumps around a bit to discuss importance of this event and some of the issues that arose from it. Such as, Michelle Obama’s thesis and some of the criticism towards how it was perceived by conservatives and then some of the events that happened during Michelle’s lifetime as well as some of the turmoil in the history of blacks. It really doesn’t settle into a consistent chronology until after Michelle graduates Law School and covers meeting Barack, dating, their marriage, and their entrance into politics. And finally comes back full circle to Barack running for and winning the presidency. A nice additional bonus is the list of resources included at the end, although there are a rather large number from Wikipedia.
Even though the writer is the same as the Kennedy issue he seems to struggle a bit more with writing this issue. It bounces around a lot in the beginning with chronology and is less of a biography and more of a history on blacks in the United States. At times the issue becomes more of a statement about the fact that there is a black president and that the world has changed, and less about Michelle Obama’s life. And while the two are obviously tied together it shouldn’t feel like it’s the focal point of the issue. Where they do discuss Michelle’s life they do a good job of presenting a fair and mostly balanced look at her life and avoid the tabloid type commentary. He also defends her in a few places which is a bit surprising since I would have hoped he would be impartial, but it’s clear he admires her. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s not as balanced as it could be.
As I mentioned the colorist for this issue is different than the Kennedy one and it shows. It feels like they went overboard with trying to capture a sense of realism and instead it comes off looking like someone colorized wood carvings. They just don’t quite have the feel of authenticity to them. And then suddenly half way through the issue the artwork changes to a completely different style…and not a very good one. People look really flat with an attempt with some weird attempt at still trying to get it to look realistic…it just fails badly. It felt like the illustrations were detracting from the story, which is never something that you want to have happen.
This isn’t as good of an issue as the Caroline Kennedy one. It isn’t bad and it’s still a decent way to introduce who Michelle Obama is to younger readers. But I would want to use it in conjunction with another biography as well.
