Read "Suki, Alone". Liked it in general. But can they please, please hire someone who knows both the show's actual events and how to follow through on a character arc? Because guys. Guys. That comic is not implying about Suki what they meant it to be implying, and all because of literally one line.

So like. From a writer's standpoint:

What they meant to do: show Suki as a community-oriented person who cares for her people, and believes in everyone succeeding together.

As opposed to (spoilers): the thief girl they set her up in contrast with, who's pretty upfront and consistent on primarily looking out for herself. She betrays Suki for one (1) corn chip to improve her own life at the prison, no surprise.

But the problem is: they give Suki an inspirational line to the effect of "we're all working together and we'll all break out together"

You know

The thing she does not do in the show

So if both the show and this comic are canon, then instead of setting up a compare/contrast with the thief girl, they've just set up a comparison. One were Suki is arguably worse, because she's been leading a significant number of prisoners on with her "we'll all fight and win our freedom together!" business, only to straight up cut them out of the escape loop and abandon them, whereas the thief is only leading Suki on in the sense that Suki keeps telling her what it's morally correct to think and confuses snide replies with agreement

My dudes. My fellow writers. You people actually being paid for this. There were so many ways to fix those awful implications against our girl's character, the simplest of which would be to not include that line. Or they could have, you know, made it canon compliant with what actually happens in the show, so that this comic doesn't set Suki up as a betrayer instead of a community builder. Like... just send all her good prison buddies off to other prisons in the wake of the warden finding out they're colluding. Have it timed to be right before the next new prisoners arrive, thus setting it immediately before the Boiling Rock episodes, so Suki didn't have anyone left in the prison she'd want to take with her on a breakout. For bonus points, include a page or two of her and her Kyoshi warriors opening up the cell of one of her prison friends post-war, thus implying she's tracking down and actually fulfilling her promises. Maybe even show her doing the same with thief girl, who was established as being imprisoned on false charges anyway, and also showing that Suki is A) the bigger person, and B) willing to acknowledge her own role in mistakes (because I cannot emphasize enough how much thief girl was not hiding her own priorities, and it was Suki who approached HER with all this, not the girl ever doing anything special to weasel her way in) (this would also open up an opportunity for paralleling Suki's earlier in-comic mistake of not listening to one of her friend's very valid thoughts and feeling, which lead to the girl leaving their island alone pre-canon; a "seeing people as they are, not what you want them to be" moment)

Anyway yeah enjoyable enough for a quick read but another one for the "this can't be canon or the characters are So Much Worse than they were in the actual show" pile

At least Aang didn't promise to murder anyone in this one

Crooked Smiles are an avatar thing

Still looking for a better Yangchen example…

zuko alone: i am haunted by my past

korra alone: i am haunted by my past

suki alone: can i PLEASE grow my beans in peace

Loved suki vs female mainipulators that want her badly comic

I recently read the Suki Alone comic, and it gave me a thought about the two groups founded by Kyoshi:

The Kyoshi Warriors honored Kyoshi's spirit by betraying her mandate. They were meant to keep Kyoshi Island safe and separate from the rest of the world, but ultimately they could not sit idly by while people were hurt and injustice was perpetrated, exactly like Kyoshi herself.

In contrast, the Dai Li stuck to the letter of the law while becoming everything Kyoshi hated and fought against. They "protect" Ba Sing Se as they were told, but they do so by capturing and victimizing its vulnerable citizens, by keeping a veil of lies over the population, and by amassing corrupt power for themselves, and Kyoshi's mandate enables them to do so. In a way, Jianzhu was the prototypical Dai Li, and their bending style (I'm remembering how in their first conflict, Jianzhu used earth cuffs and a muzzle against Kyoshi) reflects that.

I read a fanfic the other day and it had me thinking.

I whole heartedly believe that whenever Suki is trying to justify some kind of gratuitous violence she looks at aang and says something like

“Kyoshi would agree”

Or, “Right, Kyoshi?”

Because she knows full well he has connections to his past life and knows even better that Kyoshi would 100% approve of said gratuitous violence. And she definitely found ways to show Suki her approval.

Plus we know Suki and Kyoshi are buddies bc of the comic, “Suki, Alone”

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Stealing Food: Suki, Alone vs. Smoke and Shadow

You know, I love how the same thing happens in both of these stories, and yet fandom perception of it is wildly different.

redraws from "Suki Alone" (the only ATLA comic I like), and "The Search" (one I can somewhat tolerate)

Suki' Childhood on Kyoshi Island

(From the comic book Suki Alone.)

(I really hope we get more Suki comics in the future. I'd love to know more of her past and adventures after defeating Ozai.) (She's strong, athletic, and brave.)

back on my suki alone bullshit. it’s genuinely the best atla comic they’ve ever made

azula's characterization isn't actually that bad in suki alone. she's only really there for a few pages and she doesn't really do much except gloat. when suki doesn't rise to take the bait, she shrugs and walks away which makes me think she was just trying to get info out of her by getting her emotional like she does w zuko? she doesn't torture suki either, solitary confinement and bad food is hardly a war crime lmao, especially since suki still gets to eat lunch w everyone else and walk around the yard

(and azula didn't even have anything to do with it!! she doesn't have anything to do with the actual prision itself she's just there to send off the prisioners, like a typical gloating 14 yr old lmao)

yeah Azula's mildly ooc and a little overdramatic in Suki, Alone (though I'd argue that her behavior wasn't really as far off as people say considering she's shown an awful lot of times in the show to be the type who enjoys a good gloat and seeing her enemies get what she believes they deserve, whether they personally did her harm or not), but I'd take that over the way she was handled in The Search and everything that followed. It might be annoying but it's not a complete disgrace to the character, it's a decent enough explanation for Azula knowing enough to taunt Sokka about it in Day Of Black Sun, and it's certainly not the shitshow we got in earlier comics.

For that matter Faith Erin Hicks has a better grip on literally *every* other character she's written while Gene Luen Yang dropped the ball on *all* of them. Imbalance was a good setup for for the benders vs. nonbenders conflict shown to be brewing for a while in LOK, and didn't reduce any of the canon characters to a flat caricature (no Stupid-Goofball!Sokka or Righteous-Angst!Aang or Perpetual-Martyr!Katara). Even the new characters introduced had more depth than the ones in previous comics, and the plot made sense.

Katara and the Pirate's Silver, Toph Beifong's Metalbending Academy, and Suki, Alone all were good at what they did: focusing on a character and giving some interesting introspection on them.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Azula In The Spirit Temple; really I don't think she'd be getting a solo comic if it wasn't supposed to be sympathetic or at the very least tie up the loose ends to some degree, so I'm holding out hope.

Team Avatar Treasury collection! (Katara and the Pirate’s Silver, Toph Beifong’s Metalbending Academy, and Suki, Alone)

All three solo standalone graphic novels from the last year, starring Katara, Toph, and Suki, are being collected in a new box set called Team Avatar Treasury! It comes with a really nice poster of the new cover art!

Team Avatar Treasury is currently listed for October 4th, 2022, but it’s likely this release date could be pushed back.

(Source: Public industry listing, but hasn’t been announced yet. First noticed by AirspeedPrime.)

With the news about the new Avatar Studio movies coming out, y’all better get ready for the comics to become obsolete and/or highly contested. I know they are claiming they’ll respect them as canon but if one thing in life is certain, companies writing over written material is it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender-Suki, Alone

Just got finished reading this comic and I really don't understand the hate it gets? Like yeah the retcons with the boiling rock prison and kyoshi island not doing trade is a minor annoyance, but that's it. I wouldn't say that it ruined the whole comic. And whoever said that Azula constantly went to the boiling rock to interrogate Suki fucking lied😭. Azula is only in the beginning of the comic when Suki is about to be transferred to the boiling rock, but that's it. She never tortured Suki or anything like that. Hicks wrote Azula well here. I definitely have more optimism now for the solo Azula comic that's coming out next year.