Everyone who knows me knows that Fangirl is my favorite novel of all time. So when I heard about Fangirl, Vol 1: The Manga, I was beyond excited to finally see it in person. Sometimes, the only thing to get me through the week was knowing that in just a couple more days, I'd finally get to see this beautiful book in person. Fangirl is about so many things for me: writing, finding yourself, courage, speaking up for yourself, passion, and so much more. I was beyond pleased to see that Fangirl, Vol 1: The Manga just got all of that, right off the bat. An absolutely stunning and faithful adaptation of the first part of the original novel, Fangirl, Vol 1: The Manga was a delightful read that had me falling in love with Fangirl all over again.
Rainbow Rowell writes all kinds of stuff. Sometimes she writes about adults (Attachments and Landline). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (Eleanor & Park, Fangirl). Sometimes -- actually, a lot of the time -- she writes about lovesick vampires and boys with dragon wings (The Simon Snow series). Rainbow wrote her first graphic novel, Pumpkinheads, last fall. And she's thrilled to be writing Marvel's monthly Runaways comic, now in its third year. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Sam Maggs is a bestselling author of books, comics, and vide games. She's been a senior games writer, including work on Marvel's Spider-Man; the author of many YA and middle-grade books like The Unstoppable Wasp, Con Quest!, Tell No Tales, and The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy; and a comics writer for beloved titles like Marvel Action: Captain Marvel, My Little Pony, and Transformers. She is also an on-air host for networks like Nerdist. A Canadian in Los Angeles, she misses Coffee Crisp and bagged milk. Gabi Nam is a South Korean artist whose attention to detail is going to blow us away, as per Rainbow Rowell's description. Fangirl, Vol 1 is her first novel.
Cath doesn't need friends IRL. She has her twin sister, Wren, and she's a popular fanfic writer in the Simon Snow community with thousands of fans online. But now that she's in college, Cath is completely outside of her comfort zone. There are suddenly all these new people in her life. She's got a surly roommate with a charming boyfriend, a writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome new writing partner . . . And she's barely heard from Wren all semester.
As for every fan who hears about their favorite story being adapted, I was a little nervous at first at how Sam Maggs and Rainbow Rowell would transfer the original prose into manga. Once I read the opening pages of Vol 1, I knew I had no more reason to worry. The manga opens at the same scene as the book: there is a boy in Cath's room, and how is she going to keep it together in front of her family, and eventually in front of everyone? The story progresses the same way as in the book -- Cath starts classes, finally makes a hesitant friend with her roommate, and fights with her sister. We get to see her dorm room, her classrooms, her outside pre-Fiction Writing spot, and so much more. The story of Fangirl is split into four volumes for this manga adaptation, and Sam and Rainbow did a fabulous job finding the most important part of Cath's journey to depict for the first volume, that will eventually lead up to the events in the following volumes. We get to see our favorite scenes (have you ever seen an alpaca?), and a lot of our favorite lines from the beginning make it into the manga. Overall, the story was well done, and I am so looking forward to new content in upcoming volumes, and seeing even more of my favorite scenes.
Rainbow was exactly right -- Gabi Nam's attention to detail within the entire volume, in every single panel, was mind-blowing. All of the characters are so well developed, and everything down from the style of their hair was chosen with great depth of thought. Cath looks exactly how I imagined her. In fact, all of the characters do! Gabi really got the characters, in my opinion, and does an amazing job bringing them completely to life throughout the manga. Her art is already so visually stunning, that everything down to Cath's laptop stickers and the time on the clock makes this story feel so alive. Her choice of paneling, facial expressions, and distance also really had an impact on how we read the story. The characters really respond to one another through facial expressions, and knowing where the panels are split makes the manga easily readable and thought-provoking. When we see characters far away vs. up close, it has meaning within that part of the story. The details down to the hands and eyes do so much work for this story -- Gabi follows a lot of Rainbow's cues from the original text, and then fills in all of the blanks seamlessly for us. I am so glad that Gabi is the one bringing this story and these characters to life with her art.
Fangirl is written in a close third-person narration style, but the manga takes it one step closer--now, we get right inside of Cath's head with first person narration. At first, it took some getting used to -- you have to understand that I read Fangirl a lot, so I'm very used to the third person narration -- but after the first forty pages or so, I read Vol 1 with the same ease as Fangirl. I found myself even liking the first person narration better, because a lot more of the story made sense explicitly through Cath's eyes. I felt like I better understood her anxiety, in a way that I hadn't really before. Being able to see how close Cath is with Wren, while also understanding Cath's distance from her mother made Wren's decision to talk to their mother more heartbreaking, to me. A lot of these things are also reinforced by Gabi's design choices as well -- the use of dark panels or a gradient fade help visually represent Cath's anxiety and the closeness of Wren and Cath's relationship depicted in panels where the sisters are often observed up close, to name a few. Especially the ending scene of the manga, where all the action narrows down into one conversation and one text and the deep anxiety those produce in Cath is so important, and Gabi does a great job narrowing the time down and making the images darker and gray. The first person narration style tuned me in to different parts of the novel that I hadn't paid as much attention to before, which is why Vol 1 has become so special to me.
And of course, Simon and Baz. Who could forget the extremely important part they play in Cath's life, and also in Fangirl? Simon and Baz have many hats, throughout the fandom in this world and in Cath's world. Gabi does some really fun things with Simon and Baz in the manga. We get two separate introductions of Simon and Baz: through Gemma T. Leslie's eyes, and also Cath's. We get a lot of Simon and Baz content: commemorative busts! posters! t-shirts! We get to see some of Cath's fic come to life -- The Nemesis, Carry On, and even "Tyrannus Basilton, Son of Pitch" are the few that make it into the novel. Each chapter in Fangirl begins with an exercept from The Simon Snow books, or from online sources, or from Cath's fic -- the decision to not do that here really allows us to visually hone in on Cath's college journey, but that doesn't mean we don't get Simon and Baz. We still get details about their appearances, the fandom, and more through the deliberate choices of some fics and other fun inserts about Simon and Baz. We don't quite get to see the story with the hares -- we were so close! -- so I'm very much looking forward to what parts of the fanfiction will continue to be adapted, and how Gabi will depict our deeper dive into the Simon Snow world.
Like many Fangirl fans, I am now anxiously awaiting the release date for Fangirl, Vol 2: The Manga -- so much so that I've already read Vol 1 twice at the time of writing this! Hopefully we'll get news on that soon, and in the meantime, I'm pretty sure I will find myself rereading Fangirl and Fangirl, Vol 1 over and over again!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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