Martin, Jason – Laterborn #7

Website

Laterborn #7

OK fine, so technically Jason hasn’t completely abandoned the idea of the high school story, even though these mostly deal with college and its aftermath.  As long as he still has this much insight into the whole ordeal of friendship and maturing, he can keep it up forever as far as I’m concerned.  First up is a short story which is about friends a young man meets in college (it is fiction, not Jason, as far as I can tell), their time as housemates and how they eventually move onto bigger and better things while the young man just keeps living in the same house, finding new roommates through internet listings.  It’s a fantastic story; he should look into having it published.  I don’t usually say things like that, as I’m one of those dopes who think that being published in your own mini is achievement enough, but there’s a deep core of resentment at the hallowed memory of the time as housemates being made fun of by one of the old members and a full realization that those times are never coming back which make for a damned wistful story.  The comics following this keep up that wistful theme, as further stories deal with quitting a temp job for no apparent reason, being the only person who was decent to the only woman at another temp job, having too many people to pray for and the story I sampled below, which I can relate to all too well.  Finally there’s the piece that made me say he’s still (sort of) doing high school stories, as it’s all about a friend of his from 2nd grade on, how they eventually (but amicably, it seems) drifted apart, and how he later found out that this close friend had gotten married, had a kid and then gotten divorced because his wife was cheating on him with another friend from back in the day.  Clearly these comics are striking a serious chord with me, like I needed more nostalgic tendencies when I’m going home to visit this weekend.  This comic has been a real find (if I’m allowed to consider something that was sent to me in the mail a “find”), and I really can’t recommend it highly enough.  $2