Hayden, Jennifer – Underwire

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Underwire

I should admit one thing right off the bat, as it will color my review: I don’t generally care for comics that deal with young artists and their kids. That’s a blanket statement, and there are all kinds of exceptions, but it’s based on the general parental idea that their kids are unique, and their interactions with them are unique, and therefore worthy of outside attention. More often than not that’s just not the case, which is why comics like this are always a welcome change. Her relationship to her kids is a relatively small part of this book, but I found myself genuinely interested in it when it did come up, which I though to be a rare enough event to be worth a mention. This book is a series of web comics from Jennifer (plus 17 pages of new material, so even if you read all of that stuff there are still new comics for you to read), mostly in the 1-5 page range, dealing with subject like the growing realization that both of her kids are their own people and are needing her less and less (and she has the refreshing honesty to talk about how crazy they can be on certain things), two of her oldest friends hitting it off and how their collective kids fit into the picture, dueling sex dreams with her husband, her son going off to boarding school and her reactions, head lice, the intricate (and thoroughly modern) life stories of some of her daughters’ dolls, the deer that jumped at the side of her car, how her kids went back and forth between releasing their helium-filled balloons, going back to check on their favorite old college spots, and a dream where she was a terrible serial killer. “Terrible” meaning that she was really bad at it, as it’s kind of implied that all serial killers are terrible. This series was done with the intention of being something that she worked on while finishing her graphic novel about breast cancer, and it has made me plenty curious to check that out when it’s released. You’d probably get the most out of this if you were female, middle-aged and with children in school (as there’s plenty here for you to relate to), but there’s lots here for the rest of us too. Check it out, why don’t you? $9.95