This is a wonderful collection of some of the best of the Jane's World strip. Paige Braddock is a very gifted artist. This collection would appeal to anyone who appreciates well drawn cartoons that are a terrific mix of comedy and sentiment. Her attention to little details and her sense of humor are well represented on the page. This is a comic collection I am happy to have on my bookshelf in a place of honor between Alison Bechdel and Roz Chast. If you enjoy those two, you'll love Paige Braddock.

Note: I received a copy of Love Letters to Jane's World by Paige Braddock via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Love Letters to Jane's World is a collection of strips that Paige Braddock started twenty years ago. Jane Wyatt, a young lesbian woman, is making her way through the world alongside friends who help her along the journey. Jane's World was the first comic strip published in many major newspaper markers that featured a lesbian main character. Love Letters to Jane's World collects some of the main storylines in Jane's life, and pairs them with love letters and notes of appreciation from fans.

Having a physical copy of Love Letters to Jane's World to pick up whenever you needed a little laugh would be absolutely wonderful. The dialogue & communication in the strips are warm and laugh-out-loud funny. And, each story flows into each other, but they all can definitely stand up on their own.

I absolutely loved how real the relationships got, even when placed in the most outrageous circumstances. I mean, come on, one strip Jane finds herself on an island filled with Amazons, and the next? She's being abducted by aliens. Sounds ridiculous, but it was still so much fun to read. There are even references to nerdy pop culture like Superman, Star Trek, and Star Wars; anyone that knows me, knows I love a good pop culture reference.

One of my favorite aspects of Love Letters to Jane's World is the simple fact that the leading character is a lesbian. Sexual orientation clearly plays a role for the characters, but it doesn't define them. I think this is very important, especially as Jane's World was the first strip to be published in major newspapers.

There's a collection of supporting characters in Jane's World, that pop out throughout the comic strips, and it's just as easy to fall in love with them, as it is to fall in love with Jane. All of them are out there helping her through her many obstacles (or, in some cases, hindering her).

Following the collection of comic strips in Love Letters to Jane's World is a collection of rave reviews & fan mail. I truly believe that these reviews are well-deserved. As I didn't read Jane's World in the past, I wouldn't say that Love Letters to Jane's World is something I would pick up. For me, there's no nostalgic factor and I rarely read comic strips in the newspapers to begin with. However, It was an enjoyable read, and it's something that I believe others could find enjoyment in.

Love Letters to Jane's World will be released on August 21st!

I've never read Jane's World before. This collection is perfect. I really enjoyed it. There are lots of mini stories. I will definitely check her other works too.

That was really cool. I've followed Jane's World here and there, but had never seen so many of the story lines in one place.

From Jane in space to all of the great Chelle/Jill kick ass stuff and so much more (so much Dorothy). I thought this collection gave a good look at a lot of different types of Jane stories.

And the comments both from the 'real' people as well as the well known names were sometimes hilarious and sometimes touching.

And this collection brought to mind one question over and over. Is Jane the first modern literary useless lesbian? Heh.

I was given this ARC by Netgalley on behalf of Lion Forge.

I hadn’t read Jane’s World before reading the free advanced copy of Love Letters to Jane’s World, but I’m so glad to have stumbled onto it on NetGalley. Paige Braddock paved the way for queer comics and this ode to Jane is a fun peek into her adventures in love and life. Heavy on the comics and lighter on the love letters, I felt like I was able to get to know Jane in this reflective compilation.

Love Letters to Jane’s World is a delightful revisit to a great comic. I read it whenever I need a short boost of laughter. I like the chapter breaks. Jane and her friends are quirky and flawed. Stumbling through life with humor and a little angst. #LoveLetterstoJanesWorld
#NetGalley

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Love Letters to Jane's World contains both selected comics from the series and comments written by reviewers and other cartoonists. The comic starts with a list of characters who appear in the comics and how they relate to Jane, so that the new readers will know and old readers can refresh their memories. It ends with fan letters and a note from the author.

Jane's World features feelings such as insecurity and trying to figure life out that everyone will relate to; it also contains some far out there story lines, such as alien abduction and zombies. This was my first exposure to Jane's World, and I enjoyed it. The selections provided make me want to go back and find out what happened in the story in between the scenes included in this book.

Love Letters to Jane's World
by Jane Braddock
Lion Forge (21 August 18)

Settings / Time Periods: The San Francisco Bay Area (implied), during the present.

Point of View: 1st person, mostly. It’s complicated.

Main character: Jane, a young-ish lesbian, trying to find love, a relationship, and a good doughnut.

Plot: There were several plots in the book, which is typical for a comic strip/comic book collection. The plots ranged from road trips to disastrous dates to alien abduction to workplace dissatisfaction, and then back around again to more dates and hookups.

Comments: This is a terrific retrospective. Paige Braddock has assembled a ͞Greatest Hits͟ collection of her Jane’s World series, and it really showcases her many talents. Braddock’s line art is very clean and easy to read, her dialog is crisp, and each character has their own distinct voice. Braddock’s work shows a professional confidence, especially as she whips the plots in the book through many different genres. She also shows that she’s not afraid of breaking the fourth wall, having her characters realize that they’re in a comic strip called Jane’s World, and not really caring about that fact, unless they decide to try and take the strip over for themselves. The stories themselves are full of fun, adventure, and romance, and they’re easy to read in a single sitting. They also reward repeat readings, to examine some of the heavier issues about love and relationships that lurk within the narrative.

Is there a particular issue this book deals with? The overarching issue the collection deals with is relationships – friends, lovers, and everything in between.

What genres could this book be categorized in? Humor, mostly, with aspects of science-fiction, crime-drama, and romance.

Is there violence in this book? Yes. There are threatened attacks, fist-fights and a couple of gunfire episodes. The violence is not prevalent throughout the collection, but when it’s there, it takes center stage.

Is there romance in this book? There is a great deal of romance on-page, with many different couples. It is mostly lesbian-oriented, with a couple of heterosexual near-misses.

How to the characters view sexuality? All the main characters are very sex-positive, or at least as sex-positive as they can be in a for-general-audiences comic strip.

Did you enjoy reading it? Yes. The shifts between genres within the storyline was a little bit challenging, as it made the overarching storyline hard to categorize. Apart from the occasionally jarring story shifts, the comic was a lot of fun to read.

I highly recommend ͞Love Letters to Jane’s World͟. If you’d like to sample some of the Jane’s World strips, go to https://www.gocomics.com/janesworld. But honestly, buy the book – it’s wonderful.

I tried to enjoy the story and as someone from the LGBT community, I am always looking for representation in comics and books. As a comic, I felt it was far too loud and noisy, as in the art style was all over the place and writing a bit messy in general. I wanted so much to love this but found that I was bored and confused on every page. I felt like there was another story before this that I have been missing. In other words, this was not an astounding story or read and I would hardly recommend it.

I was not familiar with the Jane comics before finding this ARC on NetGalley, and when I first started reading I had to go back to look at the description which reminded me that this was an assortment of comics, and had readers’ thoughts intertwined. I never really got the hang of the flow of this book, and felt like there was a lot missing for any first time reader who doesn’t know the Jane World. It felt very choppy as far as present/past/dream(?) times, and it was hard to keep track of some of the characters. I enjoyed the detail in the illustrations though, and that the writing was more detailed than a typical comic strip. I think this book will work best for long time fans of Jane.

This was just not for me. I appreciate that it was groundbreaking in the comic strip world, but frankly, i found Jane to be incredibly unlikeable. So, I just couldn't really get into it the way I wanted to.

So, lesbian readers took to this comic, due to it being the first daily mass-market strip from a lesbian to feature lesbians? Well it sure couldn't have been for the coherence. I thought to get daily relationship problems, life in a newspaper office and reality. Instead I got a fantasia about a shipwreck on an island of Amazons, then an alien abduction. You also get no 'in' to who the heck half the supporting cast are, meaning these love letters are completely pointless to the newcomer. Needless to say, DNF.

I didn't rally think this was all that funny. I had never read Jane's World before and was intrigued. It wasn't a lack of being able to empathize, I mean relationship problems are relationship problems, I just didn't connect with the main character and did really care much about the mundane parts of her life. The best parts are when she was screwing up her relationships which were emotional but not overly amusing.
This wasn't a comic for me.

Primarily valuable for its historic merit, Love Letters to Jane's World brings together some of the best comics and plotlines from the much loved Jane's World comic strip (the first syndicated comic strip with a lesbian main character to appear in many major newspaper markets). The stories don't age particularly well but the importance of Jane's World as a cultural artifact cannot be denied. Particularly impressive is the inclusion of letters from (alas, mostly famous) fans who were impacted by the original comic strip.

I got an ARC of this book.

I had never heard of Jane's World until I saw that this collection was up for grabs. I also didn't have consistent access to newspapers at any point in my life. So it isn't all that surprising that I was not able to get into this comic when it was on going. I am very thankful that parts were collected, but I really wish they had been collected in order and released in a multi-volume way instead of selected pieces. I would have been able to follow the story line better if the story line wasn't organized in any which way the way it seemed, unless Chelle and Jane really were together five or six times. This is my first of three major complaints. 

The second complaint was how often the straight male characters "stole" the comic and made it into a "lesbians just really need a good man" grossness. The first time it happened, it was pretty amusing because Jane shut it down and made it clear that that behavior wasn't ok. The fact that it kept happening and that Jane was still best friends with the guy who did it is just really gross to me. 

The third complaint is the couples always just seemed random. I think that is mostly due to the collection not being complete so the buildup was missed in the sections that were not in the book. I didn't hold this one against the book or the author, because it was easy to blame it on limited space in a collection. 

It read like a more gay version of Ellen (the sitcom). Jane very much was a calmer version of Ellen, well, since the comic came first, Ellen was a more hyper and anxious version of Jane. Jane/Ellen lived with a straight guy and had feelings for women. Jane/Ellen never really had good luck with dating. The basics were similar, but Jane's World went much further than Ellen ever did. Jane was allowed to have more queer friends. Jane got abducted by aliens, not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. It seemed really odd and out of place for the rest of the collection even. 

The book itself wasn't funny. This was more a slice of life variety than a regular funny pages comic. I am a tentative fan. I would like to see more to see how I really feel about the series.

I requested this from Net Galley's 'read now' collection which is always a bit of a hit and miss affair, and this was a miss I'm sorry to report, because I really thought I'd enjoy it. I was thinking that it would be a fun and amusing read, but it was neither.

I became bored with it quite quickly, which surprised me, and I made it only a third of the way through by which time I honestly could not stand to read any more. It's just not my kind of humor I guess: too cheesy and simple for my taste.

Worse than this though was that for a book which claims diversity as one of its qualities, there was one - perhaps two - people of color in the entire thing, which doesn't sound very diverse to me given that most people on the planet are people of color, and a third of them are Asian. But talking of so-called minorities, I guess I'm in the minority in disliking this since it has done well for itself over the years and been somewhat groundbreaking to boot for a comic whose main character is LGBTQIA. For me she was more LGBTMIA, though.

The story is a highly fanciful 'autobiography' it would appear, given that the main character is quite obviously modeled on the author, but I hope the author is smarter than the character depicted here, who comes across as quite stupid and thoughtless. I didn't like her, much less respect her, which didn't help to like the comic strip stories.

The artwork was very much 'Sunday Funnies' style, but in black and white line drawings, so no color diversity here either, and sometimes the text was hard to read because it was also hand drawn and rather scrappily so - something I've never understood about comics. It was large enough to read okay (for the most part) on a tablet computer, but I sure wouldn't want to try reading this on a smart phone or in a badly printed copy.

It's yet another graphic novel which doesn't acknowledge that there are ebooks, and the print book margins made it quite wasteful of trees, too. This is another negative against this comic book since trees are the only entity which is doing anything concrete to fight climate change, and here is another author/publisher seemingly determined to decimate them. And so it goes.

I wish the author all the best in her career, but I cannot recommend this one.

Paige Braddock is apparently the first cartoonist to write a comic strip with a lesbian as the main character, that was widely distributed. If you are thinking, well, what about Dykes to Watch Out For, that had much more limited distribution.

And while there have been gay and lesbian "episodes" in comic strips, Jane's world didn't shove the lesbian theme in the background, but had it front and center throughout.

If you have been following Jane's World, this is some of the stories that have run in the series. This is not all, since it has been going for 20 years. If you are new to Jane's World, this is an interesting selection to give you an idea of what you have been missing.

For example, this story, below, is when Jane had a dream about being washed up on the shore of an island of Amazons.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-740" src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-15-at-12.46.40-PM.png" alt="" />

In this one, she has to deal with Chelle, her on again, off again, love interest.
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-739" src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-15-at-12.47.41-PM.png" alt="" />


And here the cartoonist herself breaks the fourth wall to complain about what the characters are up to.
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-737" src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-15-at-3.11.13-PM.png" alt="" />

There are zombies. There are aliens. There are spies. And there are normal, every day things, that lesbians and straight people do, such as work, and drink coffee.

For those who want to be introduced, and for those who know Jane's World, and want others to know about her too.

#LoveLettersToJane'sWorld #NetGalley

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

I’m a huge Paige Braddock fan and this compilation only increases my admiration and enjoyment of her work.

Not growing up in the States means I have never read Jane's World. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection about Jane. She is quirky, funny, bright and a lovely character. Her world is relatable, the other characters in it endearing and each has a distinctive personality that we can see easily. I definitely recommend getting this if you are a fan (and even if you are not)!

The only downside for me was the fact that it was not very easy to read on my desktop because the writing was pretty small on some occasions. Granted, I do not have the biggest screen but it is a normal one. Zooming in got annoying at one point.

Love Letters to Jane's World is an anthology collection by Paige Braddock with an anticipated release date 21st August, 2018. Published by Lion Forge, it's 304 pages of previously released material with new background info and commentary. It's available in paperback and ebook formats.

I love the ensemble cast in Jane's World because they highlight the innate random absurdity of the universe (talking dogs, aliens, bigfoot (bigfeet?) glasses wearing crabs), whilst still remaining firmly human in their day-to-day travails (crap job, relationship problems, money issues). I love the escapism and humor (and there's lots of both to be found here). The book doesn't spend any page content getting new readers up to speed, so it's good to have a little background familiarity going in.

Underneath the random weird stuff, the cast seem to be (mostly) decent and kind. There's no hidden agenda, they're just folks living their (slightly weird) lives. Jane's something of an everyperson dork and she's really easy to like, even when she's being clueless and annoying.

I would strongly recommend not trying to compare this series to anything else. I think a lot of reviewers have such strong preconceived ideas of What It Means To Be A Gay Comic that they sort of miss the point. Jane & co. are people going about their lives, buying wine and groceries and going to work and don't HAVE (and shouldn't need to have) an agenda. It's a mostly humorous comic book about life whose titular character happens to be gay. Don't read it just for the gay.

I really enjoyed the book a lot.

Four stars.