slice-of-life

In a breathtaking debut graphic novel from Nobrow Press, artist and storyteller Jeremy Sorese casts his readers into a neon sea of human wants and foibles with Curveball, a science-fiction not-quite-love-story that highlights the thin line between optimism and delusion, and the often agonizing process of moving on.

Set in a futuristic society that relies entirely on technology powered by kinetic energy, Curveball follows Avery, a young waiter bogged down by a miserable day job and haunted by a prolonged and painful relationship with the noncommittal object of their affections, a sailor named Christophe (Avery is also gender ambiguous and uses ungendered pronouns, which is an exciting instance of non-binary representation).

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Going away to college is often touted as one of the defining times in a young person’s life, a period in which they are no longer under the supervision of their parents and placed in an environment that can’t help but change them.  As cliche as this vision of academia seems, that’s exactly the situation of freshman Joyce Brown, one of the leading players in David Willis’s slice-of-life dramedy Dumbing of Age, which is set entirely on the campus of Indiana University.

Joyce (like Willis himself) has been raised in a loving but sheltered and strict fundamentalist Christian home and is attending school to, in her own words “hunt down the wonderful, godly man [she] will someday marry.” But Joyce’s worldviews will be tested and turned upside down by a widely diverse and intricate cast of characters. These include Joyce’s misanthropic roommate, her Yale-bound new best friend who happens to be an atheist, her rebellious convicted felon neighbor, their despot of an RA, and an emotionally unstable girl masquerading as a caped crusader (or is it the other way around?)–and those are just the people on her floor!

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Anyone who’s spent time in a foreign country can tell you that culture shock is a real thing.  While perhaps not as romantic and alienating as moody cinema might have you believe, there’s a never-ending adjustment period in which you find yourself faced with situations you never would have considered before your arrival (ask anyone who’s had to use a Japanese squat toilet).

Nowhere is this more obvious than the adorable and irreverent comics of Mary Cagle, who has for the past two years been chronicling her time as an English teacher in a small-town Japanese primary school under the title Let’s Speak English. Cagle, who in addition to teaching also works as an illustrator, writer, and colorist on a multitude of comics, illustrates Let’s Speak English in the traditional Japanese comic format called 4-koma (ie: four black and white panels stacked atop each other) and makes full use of the medium to tell short, witty, and only slightly embarrassing stories of her daily interactions with her students, coworkers, and neighbors.

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