So… we recently asked cartoonist and Friends With Boys author Faith Erin Hicks if she had any strong opinions about steampunk. The answer quite literally speaks for itself!
What you’ll read below is Faith’s intense and lovely comic strip letter celebrating the existence of Fullmetal Alchemist. Once you’re done squeeing in boisterous agreement, you can check out Faith’s comic strips about The Hunger Games, Prometheus, and way, way more here. She and Prudence Shen are also currently serializing a new graphic novel about cheerleaders versus robot builders at www.nothingcanpossiblygowrong.com!
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That. Was. AWESOME!!! Really fun read!
I saw they are printing 3 volume omnibi, & now I want to revisit…I have only read the first 16!
woohoo! Fullmetal Alchemist!
mordicai – me too. (except I think it’s up to about #12 that I’ve read and own.)
FMA is the best.
Thanks for reminding me of how awesome FMA really is. I have all 27 volumes of the manga and both the original manga and Brotherhood on DVD.
I’m not a diehard manga or anime fan by any stretch, but this series will always have a place in my heart for being one of the best stories I’ve ever read. It nails everything I love about good storytelling from the characters to the worldbuilding. Everyone should give it a try.
And I would’ve gone with Roy for the “hot dudes” but that’s just me. :)
FMA is such a great manga. I had first seen the original anime of it before it deviated from the story with Dante. Then I read the manga and followed it all the way to the final issue when it was available online. Funny thing is I didn’t know Arakawa was a woman until about halfway through reading it. Didn’t change my image of it though since women are just as good at making good stories. After all look at Mary Shelly and Jo Rowling. People need to stop being so hesitant about reading a guy book written by a woman. Some of my favorite adaptions were based off of stories written by women like Howl’s Moving Castle, Arrietty, and Tales from Earthsea.
I was glad to see yet another Fullmetal Alchemist mention in Tor.com’s Steampunk week-After three or four years of being an anime/manga fan, FMA is still my favorite overall-my wife and I have watched both animes at least half a dozen times each (the first is good but we like Brotherhood better due to following the majority of the manga, not to mention the impressive animation, music and voice-acting in both Japanese and English) and we have read the manga on multiple occasions and would love to be able to make enough money to be able to buy the rest some time (while the omnibus editions helped, only the first 9 were put into 3 omnibuses-omnibi?, whatever-and the others have yet to follow suit). My wife has crocheted several FMA plushies (everyone’s obsessed with the Ed, Al and Roy ones, of course, she’s currently working on Major Armstrong) and we even had our son dress as the homunculus Pride at the Anime Boston 2012 con(Pride from the manga, won’t spoil his identity in case anyone’s not done reading) In case you can’t tell, it’s probably our second-favorite fandom (Doctor Who is first and foremost for me, always has been, always will be)
Anyway, yeah, fan-squeeing aside: your comics are always great fun to read and this one made my day! :) Loving your Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong graphic novel thing, too, nice read so far.
*By the way, count me as another person who likes comics and stories written by women-I’ve never gotten why people are so hesitant to read anything by a woman (except for Stephanie Meyer or Danielle Steele, they’re right out), a good chunk of my favorite authors are women-Hiromu Arakawa, Jacqueline Carey, Suzanne Collins, Lois McMaster Bujold, JK Rowling, etc. Also, I like the last panel, the two cow comic artists were very amusing :)
FMA is really incredible! I almost could not wait 1 month to get each comic, when it was released here in Brazil.
As a side note, Urasawa and Jeff Smith are simply mandatory!
I’ve never actually read the Manga, but the Anime series are one of my favorite cartoons of all time.
Great strip Faith!
Hooray for FMA! And for Arakawa-sensei! And for you!
Also, you listing Lloyd Alexander as one of your art heroes gave me an extra moment of squee.
I love FMA. Unfortunately I’ve only watched the anime (both) so this gave me strong motivation to read the manga! This comic made me laugh and Faith Erin Hicks continues to impress me. If her comic is anything like her entries for Tor then I’ll definitely check it out.
Also Roy is my boy :)
I think you should send this to Arakawa – I don’t know if she knows English but I think the pure fanlove in these pics speaks for itself. Especially the last panel XD
This was so much fun. I’ve collected comics and manga for over 30 years now and Fullmetal Alchemist has a very special place in my heart. It’s a fantastically done story that I’m never going to forget.
I enjoyed the anime, and I’d read the manga… if it didn’t cost hundreds of dollars to buy and Santa Cruz had a manga section in its public library.
i think it was the last panel that *MADE* the comic – no apologies allowed for pure awesomesaucewin!
Aww great! The Kekkaishi and Blue Exorcist shonen manga are also created by women ^^. I think there are strong works by women in every area of comics and manga – your own being part of that.
I finally registered for the site just to point out that Faith drew that book wrong in 2nd to last row of panels.
I’ve loved every one of your comics for Tor, Faith! Especially the Avatar one.
And why do you look so tired at the beginning?
I love Fullmetal Alchemist. Spent nearly a decade being completely obsessed by it. Along with mangaka Ai Yazawa, Arakawa has utterly spoiled me.
although, when I realized how much $ I’d sunk into this series over the years, I realized I better stop teasing my friends who dump tons of money into comic books.
Yeah FMA. My brother got me into it. I’m so happy Faith likes it too.