May
26
Love, Exciting and New ...
True Story, Swear to God: This One Goes to 11
Creator: Tom Beland
AiT-PlanetLar, 176 pages, black-and-white, $14.95
So? Describing this book and why it's so touching is both difficult and easy. Easy because Beland's portrayal of his relationship is honest, heartfelt and truly touching. Difficult because there's almost no simple, one-sentence way to convey the myriad of small, wonderful ways in which this seemingly simple book works its magic. In that way, it's a lot like the subject it portrays. This is the second collection of Beland's comicbook series and starts with him living in Napa thousands of miles from his girlfriend, Lily, who lives in Puerto Rico. They go through a hurricane via long-distance and then have a tough choice to make about how they'll stay together. Beland's honesty and effective cartooning bring his authentic adult relationship to life with astonishing clarity and emotion. It takes only a few pages to believe he and Lilly are really in love and that they're as real as your own friends, family, neighbors and co-workers. The emotional turmoil on occasion gets a little thick, but it's easy to forgive people who feel like your friends their little flaws. This isn't a sexy, movie-style romance story, but it is a rare love story that feels like the real thing. Grade: A-
F-Stop
Creators: Antony Johnston, writer; Matthew Loux, artist
Oni Press, 168 pages, black-and-white, $14.95
So? A more standard form of romantic comedy can be found in "F-Stop," a tale of a struggling photographer whose chance meeting with a model leads to a complicated, Three's Company style series of events that lands him atop the fashion pic biz. The romance plot at times takes a back seat to Johnston's jabs at the fashion biz, which are well deserved and a lot of fun. Loux, in drawing his first comics work, has a lot of fun telling this story with well-defined and, yes, fashionably stylish art. The plot's reliance on genre conventions gets predictable by the end and the romance doesn't have the emotional chops to take up the slack. The end result is perfectly unobjectionable, but not good enough or unusual enough to warrant special attention. Grade: C
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