A fun and insightful graphic novel deconstructing famous feminine figures/myth/legend and explaining how they have been detrimental to women or how they can be a symbol of empowerment and often both at the same time depending who highlights what. The comic is very humourous despite its desire to teach. It mixes happily pop culture and classic knowledge to help people analyse what they are given. I liked that especially. I think people are loosing their analytical skills and that's dangerous. It helps that the topic interests me, even if I do thing there is a lot of repetition between the comic sections and the debrief sections that go more in depth about each figure.
Many of the references are french as this is a translated work, but I still think any modern woman will enjoy this. It's short, fun, to the point, and hold a lot of knowledge. What more could we ask?

I absolutely loved this graphic novel! Blanche Sabbah does an amazing job of retelling and analyzing the stories of women from myth and history using a feminist lens. I will definitely be checking out any other works she has!

I LOVE THIS
The comic strips rounded the legends perfectly, and I'm a fan of the illustration style.
This illustration book gives such valuable insight on how we might evaluate the ladies of the legend we heard often. How we can turn it into empowerment, and which part was actually harmful towards how the world acts towards women, even nowadays.
It terms of diversity, it practically has stories all over the world.
It gives great critical points and lots of references (which I'll look up later). It would be nice to have the physical copies of this book💙

Thank you Netgalley for providing

An insightful feminist analysis of many myths and legends about female legends and stories with female protagonists. The book depicts themes about women and society, that is society’s fear of/or protection of female sexuality and coming of age, and how through stories young women are provided with cautionary tales. I particularly liked the story of Karaba, Cybele and the Queen of Sheba which provides an explanation of the ‘male gaze’ or interference of patriarchy in the way that these women are depicted. I also commend the writer for including women of colour in this set of stories.

While the book is illustrated - it is not really for a young audience, it is more suitable for an older audience, university students, those studying literature and women or feminist studies would be a recommended audience.
Like many other reviewers - I found the pdf a bit challenging to navigate and in terms of reading and looking through the book. But overall a great text.

There were a lot of women in this book that I had never heard of. I enjoyed reading about their stories, and I liked that they were from all over cultures and mythologies.

This was an interesting book which depicts women from story’s well known to us. This wasn’t quite what I thought it was and felt done Thebes might be a little too old for my daughter. Overall a good book

It started good, exposing feminism in a new fresh perspective. It was interesting reading a short summary of well known stories about iconic women (real or fictional) showing how men "manipulated" our perception.
But in the end, it became annoying; has everything to be analyzed this way?
I understand how important the issue is, I blame those who perpetrate these absurd visions and, as a woman, I feel it as a personal matter BUT examining any details, reading always something bad it's everything but "fresh", it's just tiresome.
Please, we are not idiots, we are able to see the difference between real life and a fairytale/book/fictional rappresentation. Something that is allowed in a fictional world, WE UNDERSTAND IT MAY BE NOT CORRECT if transposed in the real world. So, having this suffocating analysis is exasperating.

There were some fun stories in this book, some of which were about historical figures I'd never heard of before. I had expected a graphic novel, but it read more like a children's story book. However, some of the content would not be suitable for children, which left me a bit unclear on who it was aimed at.

I really enjoyed this and had this existed in hard copy, I'd have bought at least three to give out to my friends.

Ladies of Legend is a feminist recap and reflections on women and enbys that left a huge cultural footprint that's told via the medium of adorable and hilarious comic strips as well as short texts, and it's generous recomendations & allusions to other works of art, largely from outside the US-centric anglophone sphere. That it itself was a treasure: I was familiar with some names Blanche Sabban mentioned, and happy added many more to my to-read or to-watch lists.

Enjoyable, short and well put together -- check it out and share with friends, basically :)

Thanks to #EuropeComics and #NetGalley for an arc.

Ladies of Legend is compendium of women through out myth and legend and how their stories are told through the male gaze. Blanche Sabbah introduces us to each woman and spells out how they have been portrayed, and to what means their story was manipulated to sway cultural thought.
Each woman's story is told in graphic form, followed by an essay by the author linking more contemporary examples of how their stories are still being told, now with more female creators. The women themselves are fascinating, and now I have a new pile of recommended reading!

Pros: I thoroughly enjoyed this fresh, fun, and feminist take on women of legends and myths. I appreciated that this book featured characters from different eras and cultures and not just Greek and Roman mythology. I especially enjoyed the modern take on the tales and seeing how the perspective changes when men are not the only storytellers. One of my favorite things about this book was the inclusion of other art forms for the reader to look into including movies, books, and works of art.

Cons: The only con I can think of is not a con at all but just a formatting note. I found this difficult to read as an ebook on my phone. I think it will be fantastic in print form though because the illustrations/comics will be easy to read.

Thank you NetGalley and Europe Comics for the copy of Ladies of Legends.

While reading this on my phone, all I could think about is how much I needed the physical copy now. I liked the illustrations, story retellings, and the author's analysis. I understand that not everyone will agree with the author's opinions, but I caught myself agreeing or reflecting with most of what was said in the book! It got me thinking about certain topics and introduced me to more strong female characters. Aside from that, I adore the "further reading" section per chapter--a lot more stuff to check out after reading this book.

I liked it and I can't wait to buy a physical copy of it!

While this had an interesting premise and some interesting stories, I can't say I was impressed with the overall result. The illustrations were interesting but I was thrown off a bit when the disney figures started appearing between Joan of Arc and Medusa, even if some of the interpretations were interesting.
Overall maybe it's me but I found this lacking at it's result.

I accessed a digital reviI accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher.
This book covers a selection of legends and modern stories about women. The comic sections tell what the traditional representations are and a short analysis. The written sections have a more in-depth analysis and a suggested work that is similar.
The analysis shows how men have interpreted female stories, in this book always negatively. There is little retelling of the stories. The whole thing felt very heavy-handed.ew copy of this book from the publisher.

Shallow looks at a bunch of female figures from myths and legends. Sabbah cherry-picks the story variants that lend themselves to facile analysis.

The art is okay, but the layout makes it hard to tell which panel comes next.

Skip this one and read a good collection of myths instead; any attentive reader will be able to gain more from them than Sabbah apparently has.

Received via NetGalley.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this eARC to read and review

I like the exploration of the women within this book, the art is fairly simplistic. Some of the stories are quite graphic with the mentions of rape and other violent acts against women so it can be a heavy read and honestly, I should have expected it but it still shocked me.

I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting to see the collection of women who were included and see how their stories were told. The illustrations added to the short stories and there was an element of humour which was needed at times with Medusa, and the humour was so natural and true to life that there was nothing forced or cringey. The different depictions of these legendary women were included and they did not shy away from the harsh truths or the darker stories which made it interesting to see the contrasts between, such as Medusa and The Little Mermaid.

Eve, Snow White, Karaba the Sorceress, Scheherazade, the Little Mermaid, the Queen of Sheba… From the dawn of mythology to medieval fairytales and today’s pop culture, these women characters have filled our childhoods and fueled our imaginations. But do we know their real stories? These ladies of legend have almost always been presented from a male viewpoint. Their stories have been used to fuel negative stereotypes and keep women in their place: in the subordinate, rigid, and caricatured roles of evil temptress, devoted wife, femme fatale, jealous stepmother, or sweet ingenue… But what if the same legends were—finally—told by women?

-----My Review
Nice book - it´s a like a graphic Novel and a Science book - someting in between. Interesting, short chapters - so you can read it little by little. It contains nude human beings (which is not a problem for myself). Lots of facts and interesting stuff, as I said the chapters are short - so you can read it from first to last page or totally mixed up.

The graphic style is quite simple but really nice, nice present for someone who enjoys books about Women in history.

Meine Note: 2

#EuropeComics #NetGalleyDE! (thanks a lot)

A review of various women characters, female myths and legends throughout history! It explores the character in question through a vignette, while following it up with an informative piece of research and companion pieces of pop culture reimagining or related content.

Author Blanche Sabbah revisits 21 women-centric myths from past and present with a feministic interpretation. Each chapter focuses on a significant female. The start of the chapter is a comic depiction that summarizes the story. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to Blanche’s feminist perspective on the tale.
Beware! This book tricks you into learning! When I first started reading the book, I was under the impression it would be entirely comics and fiction based. I was pleasantly surprised to find that each illustrated tale was accompanied by informative research. The illustrations are an excellent combination of the true tale combined with a hilarious modern sense of humor (like the Evil Queen trying to use Snapchat filters!). Overall, the illustrated tales reminded me of childhood copies of MAD Magazine.
However, at times it was difficult to follow the flow of the illustrations. Some stories seemed to be oriented up and down, while others went left and right. This was my only issue with the book. Perhaps the book read this way due to the fact my ARC was purely a digital copy. Regardless, it is a minor detail that does little to affect how wonderful the illustrations and information is!