Kiersh, Dave – After School Special

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After School Special

One of the problems with the constant need for people to escape into nostalgia is that the thing they’re nostalgic for probably never happened. Or if it did happen, it wasn’t nearly as great as the person remembering it may have thought. Don’t believe me? If you’re out of your 20’s, go back and listen to the bands you loved when you were a teenager. Or watch a few movies that changed your lives. Watch/listen to them objectively. Sure, a few of them will hold up, but far more of them will fall apart upon inspection. That’s fine! That’s just your own personal growth; your tastes theoretically improve as you gather more experience. Well hello tangent, wasn’t there a comic here I was supposed to be talking about? Yep, and that little rant should show you the effect this book had on me. This is the story of two socially lost kids who find each other and end up dating. There’s Lisa, who had an abortion during high school and Jed, who’s recently moved to town and has no friends. Lisa had friends and lost them while Jed is just trying to find something to hand onto. He’s singing for old folks even though he has his own music he’d rather be playing, which is where his rant about nostalgia comes in. It’s endearing how quickly Lisa and Jed fall for each other; even though both of them have reason to distrust people, they can instinctively see each other as kindred spirits. Even when Lisa throws a giant party when her parents go out of town you still get the impression that Lisa and Jed only care about each other. This book is also packed with little moments of loneliness, hope, resignation, and yeah, more than a little bit of nostalgia. It’s all set in the mid 90’s, but it has very little bearing on the story, outside of the lack of ubiquitous cell phones. John Porcellino refers to this as Dave’s masterpiece on his website, and I’d be hard pressed to argue with that. If you’ve liked his work, this is the culmination of years of effort, of his researching after school specials at libraries in the hopes of finding one that would speak to him. If you’re somehow new to his work, this is an excellent place to start. $10