BOOM! Studios release a graphic novel about a tomboy girl who lives in her best life and based on a song by Johnathan Coulton in The Princess Who Saved Herself the graphic novel. 
So, we get another strong female protagonist of this series and it happens to be a princess who loves playing with her guitar. For some reason, I can truly relate to one of my main characters who is a complete tomboy like her, but the feeling is mutual to this comic because it focuses on a girl who loves to play music. The whole comic is related to a song which composed by Johnathan Coulton, however the comic is written by Greg Pak and illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa. Grek is an American film director and comic writer who is known for numerous works on books published by Marvel Comics. And the composer, Johnathan Coulton is a singer-songwriter who is known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the internet to draw his fans. He actually made and sang this song which is an album for the support of Haiti which is “Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti” released in 2010. This is the link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=55UE7UYvcOw
The front cover shows a dynamic cover art of the girl playing her guitar along with her pet dragon who is also playing his guitar. And in fact, this is very rare to see a girl rocking out with her guitar. I always thought that one of my characters had a fit of a carefree personality, and yet he plays the guitar on the roof. Anyway, the art style is used as a Japanese manga art style material and it was illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa, a veteran Japanese comic artist, born and raised in Canada. The whole background is surrounded by mushrooms and some pebbles as the road to the castle. I mean what am I looking at here? Surely this could be a fantasy genre, but this time, we get to see a musical adventure of a young princess who loves rock and roll. As I’m the guy who also loves rock and roll.
The story starts with one of the most cliched fairy tale openings in children’s book history. It starts out with the old “Once upon a time” cliché, and then the narrator started to name the main character which is ‘Gloria Cheng Epstein Takahara de la Garza Champion’ that name is too mouthful for readers, so let’s call her, Glory. At the beginning of the story the narrator states to Glory that she’s a princess, she lives in a castle by a waterfall, she has a pet snake, and she eats a whole cake. But at the bottom of her heart, she loves to play with her guitar. However there was a wicked queen who can’t stand her loud music, so she caught a bee and made it larger just to silence Glory’s red guitar, but unfortunately, she tamed a bee and made a friend. And then the queen sent a blue dragon just to burn her red guitar, but due to the turn of events, Glory turned on the hose and sprayed him in the nose, which made him sneeze and burned the queen’s castle to the ground. After Glory and friends rescued the princess, she told the princess that the guitar that she was playing is bad, because her guitar is out of tune, sounded rusty, and made her ear feel in pain. She was able to fix Glory’s guitar bad tune and it sounded good again with a single chord that she played. Glory and the queen got along together playing with their guitars, enough to perform a band to draw attention to the locals. And the story ends when everyone has gone to sleep, as the writer stated about what he feels about her.
The story is very admiring in fact, making a story about a princess who loves to play with her guitar and shares her music with the queen and everyone else makes her a heroine. It’s a fun story to read, and every girl deserves to have a talent and something that she truly loves to do. The art is mostly based on some simple “How to Draw Manga” books, and based on Masashi Kishimoto, creator of the Naruto series because the way he draws he mostly draws the characters’ faces just like him, I realized after seeing that front art cover, that a spunky kid like her looks exactly like him. He might as be a manga artist in Japan than a Canadian comic artist because I have rarely seen any Japanese comic artist other than the creator of Usagi Yojimbo who uses that art style. Many artists tend to use that manga art style to draw comics for fun or for business. However, there are many artists who are willing to develop their art style, just to proceed with their work. But, this story is quite admirable and suited for children’s book storytelling. If you rather have another princess adventure where she plays the guitar, then this is for you.
Newsdesk