Katana #2 – Review

By: Ann Nocenti (story), Alex Sanchez (art), Claude St. Aubin (inks), Matt Yackey (colors)

The Story: Katana gets her Alias wig on.

The Review: For better or worse, minority characters always have a challenge developing a following on their own.  This is especially true in the world of comics, which is still mostly a pastime for white people, both on the creative and consumptive sides.  It’s not racism; it’s the simple fact that everyone tends to resonate more with characters that look and feel familiar to them, and in a market largely driven by one demographic, others will just struggle a bit.

Katana will have an even harder time of it because she’s not American by origin, meaning there’s that additional cultural barrier readers may have to deal with.  I had a discussion with commenter M0rg0th about the various remarks on Katana’s womanhood in the first issue.  M0rg0th saw it as misogyny, but I argued that it was misogyny with purpose.  As a Japanese woman, Tatsu does have these cultural expectations of what her place should be; it’s natural that when she goes against those expectations, she’ll suffer rebuke from others and doubt within.