Bennett, Marek – Mimi’s Doughnuts #19

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Mimi’s Doughtnuts #19

I don’t believe it.  Not that I want to call Marek a liar or anything, as I’ve enjoyed his comics immensely and he always seemed like a nice enough guy to me, but I don’t see how this was a 24 hour comic.  OK, he used stick figures for the stories, and OK, the backgrounds are reasonably sparse, as that’s a requirement with 24 hour comics.  Still, the backgrounds aren’t THAT sparse, the layout of the comic doesn’t look possible in a 24 hour time frame, and there are just too many distinct stories in here for me to understand the time frame.  He did say in his intro that he had a number of stories ready to go before he started, that he used tales from his childhood, his friends and friends of friends to make these pieces.  He also mentions that the restricting spaces of the stories sometimes changed the stories he was told/remembered a little bit, but the basics are the same as real life.  Aw, screw it.  I’m going to give up my skepticism and just give him credit for putting out an exceptionally thought out mini comic in a very short time span.  The theme of the comic, as should be expected from that cover, is health.  The characters from past issues of Mimi’s Doughnuts don’t make an appearance, as these are all stories about various health problems and the trouble that everybody has with their health insurance companies.  The health problems listed include early allergies (and the awful moment when a young Marek (?) found out that he was allergic to cats), a persistent cough (and hey, that story was missing a resolution), spousal abuse (OK, the kids heard it as a mutual fight, but it didn’t look good to me), acne (with the hilarious ending of finding out years later that the pills prescribed may cause later heart problems), a broken/damaged thumb, a stroke (with his later fight against the symptoms of a deceased relative), a finger (with the obligatory fight with the insurance company for coverage of the problems), a kidney (and the insurance company’s deliberately cheating him out of his needed payment), a heart (with the heartbreaking tale of the young girl who would need a transplant possibly by age 25 and how tough it would be for her to ever get insurance because this was the dreaded “pre-existing condition”), blood (from a heart attack), and face (with a silly facelift and the conversation that went with it).  It’s a great pile of stories that wasn’t hurt a bit by the 24 hour time limit.  Check it out, anybody who has ever been sick can relate to some of the nonsense in this volume.  $3