By Lisa Gullickson — We meet Mandy furiously dying her roots from their naturally fiery orange to a positively pitch black. In highschool, what was once an innocuous adult-child conversation starter - “what do you want to be when you grow up” - becomes an anxiety inducing and unwelcome probe. As a kid, you could change your answer on a whim and grown ups would laugh. One week it might be “marine biologist” and the next it would be “unicorn,” and both would feel equally possible. But now, suddenly her every move seems cumulative and consequential. Not only are the possibilities not endless for Mandy, but narrowing. Growing up, people expected her to be just like her celebrity, superhero mom - develop powers, maybe take an internship with the Justice League, wear a bikini, but there is no freaking way any of that is going to pan out, so what’s a conspicuously powerless goth girl to do? Take the S.A.T.s so she can go to college and major in being ordinary? Screw that. She’s going to figure out her fate through the process of elimination. She’s not taking the S.A.T.s, she’s not going to college, and she is NOT going to be Starfire.

You don’t have to be the emo daughter of a solar-powered, single-mom Princess from the Vega System to relate to Mandy in Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani’s I Am Not Starfire. Remove mom being a super-babe from the equation, Mandy is your average, hormone-addled, teenager whose spirit is being stifled under the wet blanket of familial expectation. Mandy just wants to cut ties, move to France where no one gives a flip about superheroes, and settle down with a nice French woman - you know, the other American dream! Until then, she can skip class, suck down her ostentatiously specific frozen latte order, and deny she has a crush on the captain of the soccer/swim team.

If you know the works of Mariko Tamaki (This One Summer, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass), you know that she creates from an emotional snapshot of what it feels like to be an angsty, disenfranchised youth. As a person who now has those squidgy feelings buried under several years of retrospect, having a narrative that recreates that distant but familiar frame of mind with Vermeer-like accuracy is uncanny. She’s Judy Bloom for gen-z and, frankly, I’m a little jealous. Her true virtuosity lies in selecting swear words that create that slightly subversive edge that caters to a mid-teenager’s salty discontent, but pairs them with messages that even their mother can love, like, “guess what, nobody has it all figured out,” “yeah, your mom doesn’t ‘get’ you, but you don’t get her either,” and even “suck it up and take the S.A.T.s already.”

This being a graphic novel, the text of I Am Not Starfire is indivisible from the images, and Yoshi Yoshitani’s poppy, ebullient, visual side of the narrative is expressive and aspirational. Mandy’s thick black lipstick and stringy braids let us know that she is strong and rad as hell, even if she doesn’t know it all of the time. And even I have a little crush on Claire - dichromatic undercut and strong social media presence? Swoon. There is something inexplicably hip about there being no black outlines, other than Mandy’s cat-eye liner, ofc. The paneling and action are as dynamic as our heroine’s (though she may prefer ‘anti-heroine’) mood - sometimes cool and containtained, and other times rash and boundaryless.

The loose genre designation of “coming-of-age story” makes me want to yack. It sounds so pubescent, like you’re about to say our protagonist is “on a journey of self-discovery” or even cringier, “blossoming into womanhood.” Ew. Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani’s I Am Not Starfire is the sour-candy coated antidote to adolescent cynicism - that aggressively passive inclination to say ‘no’ to everything because they’re too uncomfortable in their own Doc Martens to say ‘yes’ to something.

Do misfit youths still wear Docs? Nothing says, “not today, coach, I have cramps!” like a pair of lace up boots. Maybe the grossest thing about saying a story is “coming-of-age” is that on the other side of that is some kind of “arrival-of-age,” which, unless that is a euphemism for menopause, I don’t think really happens. Somewhere between my outer adult, and inner child, I still have an angsty teen like Mandy, though mine’s wearing Jenkos, which is…embarrassing, that needs to be reassured that even though you feel hapless and maybe even hopeless, you can still get your happy ending.

Graphic Novel Review: I Am Not Starfire by Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani

I Am Not Starfire
Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Yoshi Yoshitani
Colorist: Yoshi Yoshitani
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $16.99
From New York Times bestselling author Mariko Tamaki (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass) and artist Yoshi Yoshitani (Zatanna and the House of Secrets) comes a story about Mandy, the daughter of super-famous superhero Starfire.
Seventeen-year-old Mandy, daughter of Starfire, is NOT like her mother. Starfire is gorgeous, tall, sparkly, and a hero. Mandy is NOT a sparkly superhero. Mandy has no powers, is a kid who dyes her hair black and hates everyone but her best friend Lincoln. To Starfire, who is from another planet, Mandy seems like an alien, like some distant angry light years away moon.
And it's possible Mandy is even more distant lately, ever since she walked out on her S.A.T.s. Which, yeah, her mom doesn't know.
Everyone thinks Mandy needs to go to college and become whoever you become at college, but Mandy has other plans. Mandy's big plan is that she's going to move to France and...do whatever people do in France. But then everything changes when she gets partnered with Claire for a school project. Mandy likes Claire (even if she denies it, heartily and intensely). A lot.
How do you become the person you're supposed to be when you don't know what that is? How do you become the person you're supposed to be when the only thing you're sure of is what you're not?
When someone from Starfire's past arrives, Mandy must make a choice: give up before the battle has even begun, or step into the unknown and risk everything to save her mom. I am Not Starfire is a story about teenagers and/as aliens; about knowing where you come from and where you are going; and about mothers.
Publication Date: July 27th, 2021
More Information: I Am Not Starfire

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Lisa Gullickson is one half of the couple on the Comic Book Couples Counseling podcast, and, yes, the a capella version of the 90s X-men theme is all her. Her Love Language is Words of Affirmation which she accepts @sidewalksiren on twitter.