Malika: Warrior Queen Volume 2 by Roye Okupe

​Of all the well-intentioned underwhelming entries into Okupe’s YouNeek YouNiverse, Malika stood out considerably as a book actually wroth checking out. The first volume, anyway.
The second one solidly brought it right back down to Okupe’s usual level of…just ok.
Mainly because Malika took her warrior queen ways from the exciting past into the fairly bland near-present of 2025. Presumably, the goal is to increase characters’ intersectionality to create the sort of web that Marvel weaves, but this is nowhere near that. Much like YouNeek YouNiverse isn’t anywhere near as good of a name as Marvel.
Okupe, to his credit, really tries, and his historical asides and references are well done. But there is a certain overwrought (and overwritten) quality to his storytelling with all of his characters given to expounding instead of talking. And that blandness is especially noticeable in the art, which constantly looks like flat made-for-TV-on-a-budget cartoons or cheaply digitalized video game imagery.
It’s kinda sorta entertaining overall, and certainly reads quickly, especially for a 280 page book, but outside of purely representational themes, there isn’t much here to appreciate and/or love.