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Couch Tag #2

I’m stunned.  Jesse Reklaw really didn’t have his own page on this site until mid 2009?  He’s on at least three other pages in anthologies, but no minis of his own.  Well, consider that fixed.  Also, before I even get to the comic, I should point out that he sells all sorts of minis at his website from a variety of people, and at a casual glance it looks like some of the best folks out there.  Get on over there and give those people some money.  So, since I ‘ve read his stuff in various places over the years, how does it hold up as one basic story in his own mini?  Really freaking well.  This is the story of 13 cats that either Jesse owned or were in his family from the time he was a small child to more or less modern day.  If you’re a cat person (as I suppose I am), this is already a thing of beauty, as he tells the story of birth to death for these cats with some obvious emotion… and other times he’s more than a little bit detached.  Which makes sense, he was always on the move as a kid and cats came and went with regularity.  The beautiful thing about this mini, outside of the cats, is how he manages to work in some powerful personal history.  His rocky relationship with his father, playing with the cats with his sister (and watching her drift away from him as she got older), even the time of his life when he went back and forth between living with his mother and his father.  What I’m trying to say is that it succeeds on every level.  He tells stories of sad kittens that never manage to grow up, of old tomcats that hang around a bit too much, of extreme acts of kindness and a few acts of cruelty, as he was essentially a kid on his own a lot of the time.  Everybody out there probably already knows all about Jesse, but if you don’t this would be an excellent place to start.  Let’s see if I can’t get a few more of these minis up by the end of the year to make up for lost time…  $2