The Fall 2019 Manga Guide
Roadqueen
What's It About?
Leo is the hottest girl at her all-girls' school, but all she wants to do is ride her beloved motorcycle Bethany and ignore all the annoying girls trying to get her to notice them. Her friends Boots and Cassie don't think much of Leo's approach to life, telling her she's basically “a gay fuckboy,” but Leo doesn't seem able to change.Then one day Vega comes roaring into Leo's life and steals Bethany from her. When she comes back a year later, she claims that she did it to stop Leo from being such a bad lesbian, but since that didn't work, she'll make Leo a deal: pretend to date Vega for a week, and if she does anything right during that time, Vega will leave and let Leo have Bethany back. But as the week goes on, Leo starts to wonder if maybe she doesn't want Vega to leave her after all.
Roadqueen: Eternal Road Trip to Love is written and illustrated by Mira Ong Chuo. Seven Seas released it in October and it's available in paperback ($15.99) and digitally ($9.99).
Is It Worth Reading?
Rebecca Silverman
Rating:
If you're looking for an LGBTQ+ graphic novel that isn't about tropes and fetishes, this is an awfully good place to start. Although the characters in Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love are lesbians, that's not the driving factor of the plot; that's got much more to do with being a decent human being, making stupid decisions based on rash emotions, and working together towards a happily ever after, and those are all things that don't give a damn about your orientation or gender. While it does engage with some of the tropes (Leo is more overtly masculine in appearance, Vega looks fluffier and is more into girly things), it also makes stabs at subverting them, with Vega being the better mechanic and Leo handling the cooking. It also really does a good job of keeping the story engaging with only two characters for the greater part of the book, so this is basically just well done all around.
It also may be a bit familiar to some readers – Seven Seas is printing and selling it, but Mira Ong Chua's series began as an online comic. If you weren't looking for specific evidence of that (art style, chapter length, whatever other stereotype of web comics you can think of) you wouldn't know; Chua's work is well polished and nicely put together. The story itself is also good – it walks a line between romantic and funny while never quite feeling like a full-on rom-com, possibly because Vega's motivations are so very much in question. Why is she so invested in Leo learning not to be an ass to the girls who like her? Is Leo actually uncomfortable with her own sexuality? That last isn't ever really dealt with, but it is clear that Vega is the more sexual of the two women, which nicely shows that there really isn't a “right” way to be gay, straight, or anywhere in between.
Taking the plot simply at face value, this is about Leo learning that maybe she does want her life to be about more than just her bike Bethany. She's totally directionless at the start of the story, and while Vega can't give her direction, she can help her to start thinking about it, even if that isn't her stated goal. It isn't always clear that Leo is doing as much for Vega as Vega is doing for her, largely because we're primarily in Leo's point of view, but the end of the volume makes that less of an issue. Roadqueen is an easy story to get pulled into, easy to read, and makes me hope that we'll see more from this creator.
Faye Hopper
Rating:
ROADQUEEN: Eternal Roadtrip to Love is somewhat about learning to be a better person, being true to your emotions and falling in love when you had previously closed yourself off, but on an aesthetic and moment-to-moment basis, its primary goal is to have a good, gay old time on motorcycles. It's a western riff on yuri manga with a lot of good gags and surprising insight into its protagonists and what it means to fall in love, and if you like a good queer romance that is often just simple delight and joy, with fun characters you want to hang out with, it's kind of perfect.
One of ROADQUEEN's defining features is its sense of humor. For a story that is fairly involved in the mental, palpably authentic states of its protagonists, it's got a lot of farcical absurdity. The all-girls school of motorbiking badasses, with Leo literally deploying traps to knock her adoring paparazzi off of cliffs, might not naturally gel with the final, highly emotional confrontation between Leo and Bethany, where their feelings air laid totally bare. But the remarkable thing about it is that it walks this tonal tightrope without either aspect feeling dissonant. Like all great romcoms, the situations arise naturally from who Leo and Bethany are, and like the multitudes people contain, that includes the moments where Leo is being chased up a hill by people who want to date her, and the moment where she is painfully confronted with how crappy a person she's been, and how show bitter and terrible a life she's been living.
ROADQUEEN is a lot of cute and occasionally prurient fun. Its real joy is in seeing a lot of traditional romcom tropes (the whole ‘you have to be pretend to be my girlfriend in order to get your bike back’ schtick is classic) in a new, beautifully queer context. As a lesbian trans person, I don't get to see my kind of love reflected in those ways, those styles, very often. More and more, we are starting to see stories about different kinds of queer loves, queer love that can be intense, that's relatable, that's fun and funny, or in the case of ROADQUEEN, all three. It's a beautiful thing to see, it makes my queer heart happy, and most importantly, it means that ROADQUEEN is a ton of queer, gay fun. If you're looking for a good time, why not rev you engine, hope on your motorbike, and give it a look-see?
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