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Hot Dog Taste Test by Lisa Hanawalt

When I first read this book, I hated it. I thought, this is what happens when an illustrator tries storytelling. It’s just one drawing after another, and the only semblance of narrative is because one page happens to follow a previous one. It’s like reading someone’s sketchbook. Boring. But then I realized how brilliant Hot Dog Taste Test actually is.

Hot Dog Taste Test is more like a stand up comedy routine than a comic narrative, with Lisa Hanawalt as its comedian. Like the comedy sets of Louis CK or Amy Shumer, Hanawalt’s drawings present a series of narrative vignettes, and, boy, are they funny. They seem to bounce from one topic to the next, like a casual conversation with a friend over beers. Over time, you realize that the “aboutness” of a stand-up’s work has more to do with how it makes the audience laugh, than if they explicitly told you, “My comedy is about socially-acceptable misogyny.” or “This joke will be about the double standards of neo-liberalism,” as is the case with Shumer’s and CK’s work.

The brilliance of Hot Dog Taste Test is that it dismantles the gendered assumptions about cookbooks and memoirs as clean reflections of a feminized lifestyle. As Hanawalt proclaims upon entry, there will be, “No diets; no juice cleanses, I will drink juice but you won’t know it, no recipes, no actual food included.”

In other words, you will not get what you expect.

Meaty Yogurt by Megan Rose Gedris

Admission: Megan Gedris is from my hometown, and I unequivocally love anything that comes out of those parts. Ergo, I was destined to love Meaty Yogurt. Although to be honest, I would have loved it without knowing Gedris is from Grand Rapids, MI.

Meaty Yogurt is a feminist working class comedy that includes a diverse batch of characters. It humorously and unselfconsciously tells the story of 20-something Jackie, a story editor at a local newspaper who works for $8/hour without benefits, and her roommate Saffron, who is a lesbian and waitress with a degree in fashion design. The female anti-hero, Jackie, is so awesome, and loveable. Most likely a naming coincidence, but she reminds me of Jackie, Roseanne’s sister on the sitcom Roseanne. She’s ambitious, but eratic. She writes a screenplay while crapping on the toilet, and then creates an impromptu punk band with her Slovenian co-worker Sasa, after seeing an add for a “Battle of the Bands” at a local bar. They call themselves “Sex Mime” and they come in 7th out of 27 bands. Not good enough, Jackie thinks. Too mediocre. Meaty Yogurt.

She’s always putting her foot in her mouth, like when she tells her roommate’s girlfriend about the Indian curse that fated her to stay in Middleville, and then casually asks where she’s from.

Roommate’s Girlfriend: “The Rojo Valley Indian Reservation.”

Marzi by Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia

Marzi is a dense read, but don’t let that scare you. It took me a week to read this book, and every time I sat down for a session I was astounded at how little progress I had made. This isn’t to say it was a disappointing read. Quite the opposite. I was thrilled that there was so much more to go!

There’s so much content, and all of it offers fresh insights to the realities of living in 1980s Communist Poland. For a child at least. For example, Marzi—short for Marzena Sowa, the book’s author—describes the humiliation of standing in long lines for goods like toilet paper. She felt humiliated—not simply because she and her family could not control their own access to basic necessities, but because they had to openly carry toilet paper as they walked home, an open admission that they pooped. She shares other childhood frustrations, joys, and sadnesses—most of them relatable. She struggles to maintain her childlike wonder in the face of a depressed adult population. Marzi is a bright light in a grey world.

Toasty Cats by Magda Boreysza

This is my favorite zine comic of all time. Sadly, there are only 6 issues, but each is packed to the hilt with feral children, talking vermin, and sinister characters of all persuasions. Magda Boreysza’s magically creepy world is inventive like Marcel Dzama’s work, but with a heavy Paxton Gate store vibe. You know what I mean? 

The series starts off with a few strips that continue for several issues—“Meet the Vermins,” a story about two seemingly prehistoric vermin who gang up on a weasel, “The Seed,” a dark and messed-up tale about violent child-gangs. The last issue tops them all, and is a single, wordless story that runs the length of the comic. It’s about the cosmos, biology, evolution, cooperation, seduction, and love. Or at least that’s what I got from it.

Boreysza sells her zine comics online, but appears to be taking a break this summer. If you pester her enough, though, you might be lucky enough to buy your own copy of Toasty Cats.

On the Outside Looking In by Kaisa Leka

You ever wonder why Finnish comics are irrepressibly awesome? Well, here’s another reason to ponder that question: Kaisa Leka. On the Outside Looking In is like no other comic I’ve seen before. From the book design to the autobio content, it’s proof positive that there’s something magical in the water over there.

This story is like a fairy tale about an insecure mouse-girl who was born with malformed feet, and a post-punk duck-boy who take a road trip together and swap stories about how they came to Krishna Consciousness, and into their love relationship with each other. She explains that as a teenager she often felt estranged from herself, that she was looking at her own body from the outside. And he talks about trying skateboarding, vegetarianism and Buddhism before settling on Krishna. Later on, she recounts how her malformed feet had to be amputated, and how she adjusted to prosthetic ones.

Favorite quote: 

“I think you can see how relevant a religious movement is in the world by examining the position of women in the movement. An oppressive religion will be marginalized sooner or later.”

Leka’s comics vocabulary is wonderfully simple: girls are mice; boys are ducks; Blue and red indicate past and present as the characters recount past events. Text mistakes are blotted out with ink, not edited out in Photoshop. The dialogue between the two is expansive and meditative. It takes on the big issues of life through the kind of individual storytelling and sharing that often only happens while driving or traveling.

Mirror by Hwei Lim & Emma Rios

Can I be honest for a minute here? I love, love, love this new comic, Mirror, by Emma Rios and Hwei Lim, but I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in it. It’s my fault though. Fantasy comics are too complicated for my tiny brain. What I love about it—and why I’m going to keep reading it like the tourist that I am—is that the graphic work is ah-mazing. And also because I’m generally interested when two women team up to make something totally new and unexpected. This is a comic like nothing you’ve ever read before.

Rios and Lim are both illustrators and writers, making for an interesting collaboration. It seems like Hwei does most of the illustration, but Rios’ unique panel layout is evident throughout. Both simply credit each other as “creators.” They met in 2008 through Lingua Comica, a comics workshop organized by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) where they were paired up representatives from Asia and Europe. Rios is from Spain, and I’m not sure where Hwei is from.

Because I lack understanding of this comic, I’ll just describe my enthusiasm for it. The graphics have so much emotion, movement and dimensionality. The coloring is juicy. The characters have expressive physicality, and are so inventive—an albino-like mouse-person, an indentured bear, a vampire witch, a prince, a bull guardian, a talking cat. At least that’s what I think they are. This comic is a pure pleasure to simply look at. And maybe that’s why I’ve been less successful at following the story. One thing I do know is that you’ll want to take your time with Mirror. It is a densely-enjoyable read. Not to be missed.

Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz

I’ve thought a lot about Julia Wertz’ work, but only since I started breastfeeding. I bought Drinking at the Movies on my first outing to the comic book store after giving birth this past January. I have no memory of what compelled me to buy the book, but it was a revelatory read.

Wertz’ comics were the only thing I wanted to read during those first few months when life was all about nursing, resting, healing, and learning, learning, learning how the fuck to be a mom. I not only blazed through Drinking at the Movies, but The Infinite Wait and then Museum of Mistakes. Reading Julia Wertz’ comics is like accessing a remote part of your most basic, most interior self that truthfully thinks that farts, poo, and anything excretory is the only comedy worth laughing about. For me, that was the only part of myself that was still in tact amidst excruciating nipple pain, a debilitating hormone tsunami, and a wounded under carriage. I needed the comedy.

I found a friend in her autobio stories, and maybe that’s because we have a few things in common—living in San Francisco, living in Brooklyn, biking everywhere, having way too much experience in food service, and dressing in mostly pants n’ hoodies. We’re both from the same generation of girls who thankfully missed the cues on how we were supposed to act right.

I can firmly say that Wertz’ work is feminist, but to engage with it is to also dismantle the part of your brain that could explain exactly why that is. Wertz is a liberating read for that reason.