You Should Know Better

Reading Comics Into Adulthood

“The first thing I need to get out of the way is that I have no soul.”

This is Raleigh, the self-proclaimed reticent. It may seem dull to have a main character who’s seemingly devoid of, um, character, but her emptiness allows you to put on her skin and experience the blight of the tag-along.

Brian Lee O’Malley’s got blood and sweat in his ink.  The panels in Lost made me feel that if I leaned forward far enough, I’d fall into the picture.  He captures the breathtaking monotony of roadtrips: sky-swallowed landscapes, cookie-cutter restaurants, and vanishing point roads, taken in from the same sweaty seat. The dialogue curves around ears, blows with the clouds, and is lost from the panel at the whim of Raleigh’s finnicky attention span.

Though not as wonderfully Killy Bill as Scott Pilgrim (many fans of the kung-fu twenty-four year old raised some nerd hell), Lost still captures the essence of the mercurial state of relationships.  For all its casualness (no ninjas, no robots), it’s still charged; with the rawness of seconds when you’ve got lost love on the brain; and that beautiful moment when you realize everyone else in the world doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing either.

Also, it’s about what happens when Raleigh’s mom meets the devil and exchanges Raleigh’s soul (to be placed in the body of a stray cat) for a successful career.

Yeah, you’re paying attention now, aren’t ya?

Recommended to: recluses, people on road trips, and those who don’t mind spoilers (sorry)

-CMH

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Rez Sick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.