Writer Marjorie Liu revealed the ideas behind the creation of Monstress go deeper than just wanting to write her own kick-ass graphic novels.
Monstress, illustrated by Sana Takeda, is the result of Liu wanting to branch out on her own after a run with X-23 at Marvel. It’s a graphic novel set in an alternate 1900s Asia following the story of 17-year-old Maika Halfwolf, a young girl who is searching for clues about her past while battling a monstrum that lives within her. During her spotlight panel at San Diego Comic Con 2017, Liu explained Monstress was a conscious effort to subvert the cultural norms about women in media.
Liu wants fans of the comics series to know that everything she writes is intentional. At its core, Monstress is a story about the philosophical issues Liu was struggling with at the time of creation.
Liu told the panel audience, “It has to do with my family, but it also has to do with some larger philosophical issues I was wrestling with about race, gender, colonialism and slavery. And so I was thinking a lot about how people are emotionally invested in political fantasy fiction. And they are fantasy.”
Liu also went on to name the fantasies she believes are rampant in today’s society.
“People will say, ‘Oh racism doesn’t exist. We’re in a post-racial society and we’re all beyond it.’ That’s a fantasy," Liu told the audience. "Folks who say, ‘Rape culture doesn’t exist.’ That’s a fantasy. Folks who say, ‘Patriarchy doesn’t exist.’ That’s a fantasy. Folks who say that, ‘Well not all men.’ That’s a fantasy. I wanted to address that. I wanted to address that in Monstress.
“I wanted to address this vast inequality I see in popular media, whether it’s on screen or in books. We see tons of men on screen and one or two exceptional women and that’s it,” she added. “You would think that a virus had wiped out all the women...the same thing with people of color. That was something I felt very strongly about that I felt I could address in Monstress through the estrangement of this fantastical world.”
And Liu has accomplished this. If you turn the pages of Monstress, you’ll see most of the characters are women of color. Through Maika, you’ll learn heroes aren’t also mean to be perfect and likeable. You’ll see women fighting against other women, but also supporting each other. You’ll see thoughtful introductions of men in the story to make sure they don’t fall into tropes as well. You’ll see Maika visit settings created with Asian, Middle Eastern and North African influences in mind.
“I also wanted to tell an epic fantasy that wasn’t Eurocentric,” Liu said. “I grew reading epic fantasies that were only Eurocentric and you know what they look like; it’s ‘knights in shining armor.’ It’s what we call Western feudalism. And I wanted to tell a story that was set in what was traditionally considered the Orient, which is North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. I wanted to tell a story that reflected the hybridic nature that I’m familiar with.”
Liu went on to say the Asia she knows isn’t monolithic and doesn’t agree with the way it's represented in media. Liu is currently working on the third volume of Monstress as well as other unnamed projects. She’s also completed several issues of Marvel’s Han Solo comics. Check out more of Liu’s work here.
