Fire Rabbit by Yuma Wang (Mini Kus! #129)

Yuma Wang’s work initially seems like it might be aimed at children purely aesthetically, but it’s actually a very challenging story full of heady concepts and imagery despite the shaky and uneven line weights. Fire Rabbit is full of rough-hewn art using pastels that function with few words. At times, it felt almost like a rudimentary X-Men riff, with a young semi-anthropomorphized girl manifesting “fire hands.” It seems she has lived with this affliction her whole life; occasionally the ability is useful (thawing another frozen girl that she finds, or even thwarting a sexual assault in progress), but it also causes her to have to travel with buckets of water to perpetually cool her hands, and require assistance to perform basic daily activities like feeding herself. Wang’s work seems to question to what degree her abilities are a gift or a curse. It’s a very worthy concept to examine, and I admit to being quite saddened by the end; an accident causes her to inadvertently immolate herself, and nobody comes to her aid, highlighting the missing hero complex in our society. This is a very intricate idea told in an atypical way; we’re all standing around waiting for someone else to jump in and do something to help, to better our fellow travelers, and to better society as a whole.