Woman World

by Aminder Dhaliwal

When a birth defect wipes out the planet’s entire population of men, Woman World rises out of society’s ashes. Dhaliwal’s infectiously funny instagram comic follows the rebuilding process, tracking a group of women who have rallied together under the flag of “Beyonce’s Thighs.” Only Grandma remembers the distant past, a civilization of segway-riding mall cops, Blockbuster movie rental shops, and “That’s What She Said” jokes. For the most part, Woman World’s residents are focused on their struggles with unrequited love and anxiety, not to mention that whole “survival of humanity” thing.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Feminism, Fiction, Humor, LGBT, Queer

259 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2018

About the author

Aminder Dhaliwal is a native of Brampton, Ontario and received a Bachelors of Animation from Sheridan College. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she is the Director at Disney TV Animation. Previously, she worked as a Storyboard Director at Cartoon Network and Storyboard Director on the Nickelodeon show Sanjay and Craig.

She has serialized Woman World biweekly on instagram since March 2017 and has garnered over 120,000 followers. Woman World was nominated for an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is:
- funny
- pretty
- cute
- smart
- creative
- consistently interesting
- topical

So basically it's exactly like its subject matter :) And I want this fantasy graphic novel to become reality, thank you.

Bottom line: In my head every graphic novel is this.

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pre-review

GIRLS RULE!!!!

review to come / 4 stars

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tbr review

it's so important to live out your dreams through reading

[Gabby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up from my library and I had no idea what this book was about, but the cover and synopsis intrigued me. I thought it started so strong, I loved the artwork and the colors and was immediately invested. But then, most of this story is in black and white, and it’s not really a typical story where we follow characters and their stories — it’s short brief comics about funny moments between characters. But some of the jokes fell so flat for me and I didn’t think they were that funny? I liked the comics where the grandma was trying to explain things from the previous world to her granddaughter the most, but otherwise I thought some of these were kind of annoying haha. I guess I just went into this with the wrong expectations.

[Whitney Atkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book by complete chance at the library and I am smashing it onto my wishlist to buy ASAP because it was SO good!! I remember reading Y: The Last Man and being so confused that in a story about all the men in th eworld dying, why would the authors choose to focus on the last man instead of women ruling the world?? And this gave me everything I wished that book was, plus it was SO hilarious. I was actually cackling out loud reading this and I would keep flipping back to my favorite comics and laugh at them even more. This isn't necessarily one continuous story so much as little humorous scenarios about each of the characters, and the author's ability to make a joke in a graphic novel format with the art style, the punchlines, breaking the fourth wall, making meme references, and packing a punch with a political statement was expertly done. I highly recommend this and I'm so glad I picked it up!

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woman World is a whimsical graphic novel about a post-apocalyptic world in which there are no men. Two scientists, a married couple, notice that less men are being born and try to warn everyone, but like other scientific phenomena lately, they are ignored until it is too late.

The results are weird and wonderful. There is one little girl, in need of a father figure, who fixates on a video she found of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, even though there are no more men and no more malls. There are tons of comical bits like that. This is not a serious book by any means. I found this a sweet respite from the woes of the everyday world right now.

[Josie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inserts easily. String doesn't leak at all. Wish I could have the same functionality in a more eco-friendly product though

[Loz · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. Some real funny bits and I like the art a lot. This is *very* binary and doesn't do a reassuring enough job addressing even binary trans folks to make me comfy or be ok recommending it to most of my pals. Overall, good but flawed in a way that erases me personally and many others.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s post-apocalypse. Men have gone extinct, leaving women behind to create a new normal. What are the unique challenges? Which problems are no longer problems, and which persist? Despite the bleak premise, Woman World is firmly comedic, a series of loosely connected scenarios featuring an adorable group of characters. The comedy never reaches laugh-out-loud hilarity, but it’s amusing in spots, especially when referencing pop culture.

I liked this graphic novel, but without an overarching plot, it feels unsatisfying and the finished product is merely ok. Although Woman World is meant to be playful, some serious parts could have taken the premise to interesting places. However, by the end, an overall message does reveal itself: Apocalypse can wipe out all men before it can wipe out problems that are, by their very nature, everlasting.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book based on/derived from Dhaliwal's web comic of the same name about a time in the future when men die out. Can women live without men?! Will they suddenly be different? Will they have better relationships? Of course we know that W/W relationships already exist, so we have some data on that (and in comics, from work such as Dykes to Watch Out For), but what if NO men were around? Will this make women suddenly different? What if women ruled the world?

Dhaliwal's answers to these questions are lightly humorous, not (to me, at least) laugh-out-loud funny. The we-comic excerpts are loosely connected, with jokey punchlines to strips, but just okay jokes, usually.

You know the (Alison) Bechdel test, which observes that when any film/tv/comics stories are told with women talking, that they almost always talk about men? Well, generations later, some of them still talk nostalgically of men! But mostly it is about relationships, and a variety of women in various shapes and colors and sizes. Not deep commentary, but includes a wistful, thoughtful epilogue. I (a guy, so consider the source?) thought 3 or so stars throughout, but liked the ending and hope to read more, so I rounded up.

We have other examples that approach these issues: Y: The Last Man by (male) Brian Vaughn, where all men but (apparently) one are dead (post-apocalyptic, with humor); Ooku, an alt-history manga set in the Edo period of Japan that like Y and Woman World presupposes a plague wipes out all or most men. Bitch Planet, too, where all "bad" women are sent by men. Tables turned on power issues.

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always had a hard time inserting tampons and mostly just stick to pads. However I had to go swimming the other day and stopped by the grocery store to pick some up. I picked this brand solely because it had nice art on the packaging. I like that this brand supports women artists!! At the pool, I spent 10 minutes in the bathroom stall trying to get one in, I finally did it but it felt like it was falling out the entire time I was swimming which was kind of uncomfortable... I'm still giving 5 stars though because I feel like it was just user error on my part and I really like the artwork/design on the packaging. Overall the applicator was nice and I think they're pretty good quality tampons.

[Julia Sapphire · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

This is a graphic novel that I have really mixed thoughts on. The premise is that they live in a world where men are extinct. We follow a bunch of girls, their relationships with one another, and them learning about men. This is not really a continuous story, it jumps around a lot and is sometimes written as individual 1-2 page comics. I felt no attachment to any of the characters and the writing was not my favorite. Ulaana was the only character that I found interesting and was invested in. I did quite enjoy the art style of this one and the color palette that was used. This graphic novel is supposed to be funny and it tries to crack a lot of jokes. Some of which were great but some of which fell extremely flat. I think it depends on what type of person you are if you will personally find this bind up humorous or not. Overall, I can see why people liked this but it fell a bit flat for me personally.

[Melina Souza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amei!

[Angelina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful! Just enough absorption without being totally drying, and never leaves me feeling uncomfortable. The applicator is easy to grip. My only criticism is that the wrapping is a tad hard to open but besides that a 10/10!

[Hannah Garden · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.21.19 OK a friend suggested I might tone it down a bit here so I edited the reread review to be less over the top, which I’m sorry I thought the over-the-topness made it less serious but guhh every time I think about this argument I just can’t, and nobody else cares anymore so I have to just keep spilling it all out here, hoping to empty of it in time :/

7.19.19: I just reread this while killing time at the library because it’s short and sweet and I will go to my grave filled with frustration over the reviews asserting that this collection of strips had some obligation to be a full on sci-fi opera and therefore “disappointing this is what people want to read.” But if it’s disappointing that people want to read comic strips by young women of color about a world without men then sign me up for the Disappointment Cruise, I’ll meet you at the shuffleboard court.

01.23.19: Comics as a medium right now is at this place where someone will get really popular on Instagram and then get a book deal, and people can be SALTY about it, like the book deal was a popularity contest? Or like the comics only “deserve” to be free on the internet? It’s kind of a weird time for comics I guess? Idk I just got out of book club and it was kind of intense, like this book got called shallow about fourteen times and I got all red and breathless trying to say I don’t think it’s shallow I think it’s just jolly, it’s just a jolly frolicsome little collection of comics, which is so uncomfortable I hate how sensitive my stupid nervous system is when I’m trying to make a case I feel like it’s important to make, but DAMN it can get real sometimes when we start calling names and talking about who “deserves” what.

Anyway I found this book to be charming and warm-hearted and light, and those are qualities I am really in pursuit of locating in the world right now, so I found this to be a total pleasure.

[Sara the Librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels a bit strange to call a book about the aftermath of the mass extinction of men charming, but there we are. This book is just charming. What's the world like when men have died out? Pretty darn nice thanks for asking!

With simple but subtly impactful artwork that stares serious social issues right in the face and makes them not just palatable but downright cute Aminder Dhaliwal delicately draws her way through the lives of a small town of women just living their daily lives. We take tiny little sips of their conversations and fights and parenting and yes, remembering the good old days more than a little wistfully. And its all just gentle and good and wryly funny.

Dhaliwal has a sweet and silly sense of humor and she's more than willing to thumb her nose a bit at social justice warriors and the more ridiculous arguments made by the feminist "warriors" who give the rest of us a bad name. But she never stray's far from the simple themes of love, family and identity.

This crept up on me a bit until I finally realized near the end how caught up I'd become in stories that might have been mundane and pointless in other hands but in Dhaliwal's fairly sing with gentle humor and heart.

[disco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious in all ways.

How many of you skewed bi anyway?

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was sus at the potential for this to be cisnormative & extremely binary but my fears were wrong because TRANS GRANDMA !!!!!!!!!!!! I demand more stories featuring trans grandmas they are the light of my queer little life

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super fun!

The set-up: The world slowly changed as male babies stopped being born and the remaining men died off with the passage of time. But then natural disasters destroyed civilization, leaving the surviving women in a fairly functional post-apocalyptic dystopia (or utopia depending on one's point of view) of small communities where they live and work together.

The execution: The story is told in a series of one- or two-page gag strips that were originally released on Instagram. Not only are they funny, they hang together well enough to weave an engaging tapestry of relationships: friendly, professional, familial, and romantic.

I would love to see a sequel filling out the details of events mentioned in the epilogue.

[marceline · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book felt more like a collection of comic strips rather than a unified story. Also, I hated how the villages chose flags that were parts of Beyonce's body. That was incredibly creepy and dehumanizing.

[Kyra Leseberg (Roots & Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genetic mutation wipes out men, natural disasters send the world into chaos, and suddenly it's a woman's world.

Readers follow the residents of a village known as Beyonce's Thighs as they attempt to rebuild civilization with compassion, curiosity, and some hilarious (and, at times, completely accurate) theories about the past.

I loved this collection and the topics it covers while being thoughtful and ridiculous at the same time!

For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on a whim because it comes in a combo pack with both regular and super absorbencies. I wasn't expecting much from these comics after reading the bad reviews but these actually work great for me so far. I have only tried the regular absorbency in this box so far but they work well and are very comfortable to insert and wear. I also read other comics but those are a little more uncomfortable to insert at times and they do leak a little sometimes. I have not noticed any leaks from Woman World so far and I would highly recommend them because they are very comfortable to insert and wear.

[Vanessa Álamos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not usually use tampons because I do not find them comfortable, but I can recommend to all of you the eval liberty compresses, I love those as much as I love Woman World although I'm looking forward to trying the menstrual cup

[Bernisaurio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel very safe using them, never had a leaking problem. If the package was bigger (and with more tampons), this review would be perfect.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting graphic novel, comprised of connected mini-comics, which Dhaliwal originally self-published on Instagram. Woman World explores a world in which men have become extinct. In it, the exclusively female community re-learns how to connect to each other, form and maintain relationships, and manage society on their own terms. Although at times too brief in its exploration of ideas for my liking, Dhaliwal is able to spotlight some really sharp observations about the way women think and act, and the role that our power relationship with men has in developing such patterns of behaviours. There were also a bunch of funny (punny) moments- which I really enjoyed.

[Lu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I mean I read the whole book... but it was not good. Not at all. There were over 250 pages in the book an I liked maybe 6 of them and even those 6 pages weren't that amazing. I do not recommend this book at all.

[Özde · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh no, oh no, oh nononononono...
konu çok güzel bazı yerlerinde güldüm evet ama eksik çok... saçma yer çok...
belki de bana göre değildi.

[✩☽ · Rating 1 out of 5]

once upon a time, there were no men.

how do you fumble such an interesting premise? this book is so bad it's almost fascinating.

dhaliwal chose to end this book with a screenshot of some text messages she sent to her friends in which she says, "when the men go extinct it would be like women learning to talk again because they're not being interrupted". apparently dhaliwal's idea of what women talk about when they're not being interrupted is ... men.

in a world where civilization has collapsed, the women apparently have little better to do than spend half their time thinking about men. the "bravery of man" is valorized; they even set up a father's day celebration where women who've grown up without men can reach out to an imagined father figure, because it totally makes sense that women who have grown up with zero male influence in their entire world would really really long for a paternal influence, somehow. there's about 2 panels that vaguely reference the patriarchy; in one of them, a woman brings up how men erased women from history and it's shut down with "well men are extinct now". not that the writer has any obligation to write about the partriarchy — but this was marketed as feminist humour yet it takes a loose definition of both those words for this book to even remotely qualify.

(the very premise - that a male doctor discovered that male babies were no longer being born but was ignored by the male dominant world - defies belief. i mean let's be real, if every infant on earth was born female, the men would be blaming women, as they have done, you know, for the past millenia. but thou shalt not nitpick, the worldbuilding is not important here, let's move on.)

this was published in 2018, so of course it has to be inclusive - as later panels clarify, confusingly enough, that everyone born "identifies as female". though why the women are preoccupied with the extinction of the species when gender identification is entirely separate from procreation is anyone's guess. another panel loudly reminds the reader that "vaginas don't represent the scope of womanhood" ... so of course, the writer choose to dehumanize a black woman instead (if that isn't liberal gender politics in a nutshell). there's some quips about "everyone skews bi" and how "this female identifying world is just the fantasy of a horny thirteen year old (lesbian)", because why not round off with some weirdo flavour of homophobia (the other component of the nutshell).

this book really has nothing to offer beyond the occassional enjoyable full page illustrations. it doesn't engage with any of its purported "feminist" themes, its post-apocalyptic worldbuilding is unconvincing, its female characters are shallowly rendered and unmemorable. it's not even funny, just playground gags and juvenile silliness. a lot of the dialogue bears a striking resemblance to the kind of self deprecating humour common on anxiousbean.tumblr.com. maybe the dopey humour and self conscious insecurity plaguing most of the characters might have worked better if the characters were girls and teenagers rather than grown women. seriously, how is the mayor's biggest problem that she's not well liked enough?

i was expecting a sardonic depiction of women in all their complexity in a world without men but instead got something akin to a series of instagram posts about anxiety unconvincingly wrapped in the guise of post apocalyptic fiction.

[Muffinsandbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hyper original, drôle et intelligent, j’ai adoré !! 😍

[Elizabeth A · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, color me confused. Why do so many reviews of this book review tampons?

This is a collection of a popular Instagram web comic series, though not one I had heard of before. In this premise, a birth defect wipes out the all the men on the planet, and Woman's World rises up out of the ashes. How will women behave? will the world be a better place?

We get dropped into one village, and each page or two is a vignette about the lives of the women who live there. The very young have never met a man and are fascinated by them, and the remnants of that world. The older women seem to have moved on just fine. There is some humor here, not laugh out loud, but a smile every now and then. It's very episodic - comic strip format - and a quick read. Other than a few strips, I found this collection an OK read. I'm not a fan of the very sketchy art style either, though it does convey what the author intends. This one clearly has lots of fans, but there wasn't enough here for me.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am new to Dhaliwal's work, so I was unaware of her larger web comic work. This compilation was clever, sometimes very funny, other times poignant and thoughtful.

Each page, or page fold is basically a standalone comic, similar to the newspaper "funnies", so this is an easy one to pick up and down for a quick smile.

[Sprinkles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive absorbency, stellar packaging, no patriarchal residue, and eco-friendly. The applicator is not only comely, but inclusive. Would recommend to others!