Mini-review comic dump
These, other than Los Bros Hernandez and Bechdel, ended up being geared towards the YA genre, a perspective which I cannot always understand having personal appeals to with the more cynical I become. Or I feel older and I feel more distant from a self who needs the sorts of affirmations of redrawing my childhood into a less traumatic sensation of free-organized things.
Anyway:
Sloth - Gilbert Hernandez
Obviously I like Los Bros Hernandez a lot and don't need to write that again. However, I tend to prefer Jaime's work over Gilbert or Mario's. I mean - Maggie and Hopey are probably the greatest characters put into a comic. I will stand by that. Sloth is not like the Palomar sections that Gilbert is better known for doing, but it's also not unlike it. I had some strong Charles Burns feelings towards it. I have a soft spot for him in the same way I do Clowes, but Hernandez doesn’t have that same cynical perspective overtaking the bizarreness or violence in his worlds. Still, the surrealist black and white ink in hellscape suburbia is not new, but just differently focused. I’m sort of unrelentingly obtuse with the consideration in that statement, sorry. The flowing from arc to arc here threw me for a good loop. It's simple but I enjoy it for the same reason people enjoy Marquez stories, which feels like a fair comparison here that I would only be able to find in Gilbert, and not anyone else mentioned.
Mis(h)adra - Iasmin Omar Ata
I didn't love this for pretty obvious reasons. It's a fine comic but has the sort of poor pacing/weak
characterization of a webcomic, coming off “on the nose.” The main focus here is how and what it talks about when it mentions epilepsy and other disorders which have intense effects on one's life. It talks about culture and discrepancies between understanding health issues in familiar units - real or created. The approach however, sort of cheapens the product of its intent as a disability talking point because it loses itself in language without substance. Or, it privileges the identity with a health issue over the character’s general self, and not for reasons of making some sort of definitively radical disability politic. It doesn't matter of course but, it also does. I don't want to rag on this too much, because it feels wrong and I wouldn't have kept reading if I hated it outright.
I remember reading Liz Prince comics as a kid. Do you? Probably not. Well, until I make it, her comics were a nice comfort as a fat punk loser with no friends in high school. I thought mostly about how tied to no one I was beyond my sort of unhealthy obsession with listening to the same 3 albums repeatedly and performing Ergs rip off songs in two very shitty bands with some shitty (damaged but unwanting/unwilling to shift to change) people. This is a much younger-directed comic than I typically enjoy as far as memoir comics and comics go. It's something I wish I had had for my gay students when I was teaching because it's cute and fun and would be a snarkily teenage version of the comics that they have that are unconnectable. It's definitely not perfect on its gender portrayals but if you've never been a fag in the wrong gender, wondering why you don't fit, then you really can't get a say here.
As the Crow Flies - Melanie Gilman
I picked this up to finish it but the comic doesn’t finish. I don’t know what they’re going to do about that and feel a bit remorseful for a style that is unlike but makes me nostalgic for j’s webcomic-obsessive days of old (see: Harkovast). It has similar problems to Mis(h)adra as far as identity and purpose goes - utilizing its othered characters to drive the plot is a weak reason for them to be othered beyond an authorial intent/decomplicating their investments of course - but is also more a sweet story that would never happen in real life. Sometimes I have to let that slide. I became a bit disappointed in most of these comics being geared towards kids because I'm now a jaded 25 year old waste of life so ignore any of my complaints at anything and everything and get the hell off my lawn.
Are You Listening? - Tillie Walden
Stuck in child comic hell j? Yeah. I love Spinning, Walden's memoir-comic. It's beautiful and sad and melts me. Some parts of this feel distant because I’m not the targeted group. That is fine. I do not have to be. Other parts made me cry in a Savers parking lot on no sleep, while an old woman fed the largest group of seagulls in winter I’d ever seen. Walden is good at comics and I’m glad I came across her and for when it hits.
God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls - Jaime Hernandez
I’m going to make myself a t-shirt that says “PAIN GIRL” on it. That thought made me cry the other day about how it would have been the type of an inside-joke I’d have with an ex partner but that’s just because I’m sentimental and sad of late. This is classic and wholesome and locas. Didn’t intend to read two different solo Hernandez projects (although this one could be considered still within L&R).
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For - Alison Bechdel
The only reason I’m mentioning this is for the full monty to be out of here. I have never spent much time with D2WO4, or at least been less committed to scouring the whole archive. There’s nothing really to say because it’s Dykes to Watch Out For, and you better.
The last comic in this list would have been Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up With Me but someone is really late returning it at the library it’s at which is bullshit, you know? Tamaki (both Jillian and Mariko, really) is really good so it’s probably really good - but it’s marked as a PZ 7 so I’m basically doomed to feel angsty.
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