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Howell, Gabriel – Forget Me Not
Fair warning here: this is going to be one of those reviews where I try to interpret some fairly abstract stuff, while also engaging a book that’s at least a little bit about how much you should put yourself out there while also maintaining your own health and sanity. As I’m somebody who doesn’t use any social media and has no advertising for this website (meaning that I’m basically content to shout my opinions into the void, with little to no idea how it’s being received until I meet people at conventions), this makes me uniquely unqualified to talk about this graphic novel. And yet! Page by page, message by message, I found myself being pulled into this story and wishing there was any reasonable way for things to get better for the dirty moppets depicted in it. The main characters are introduced as Complications, Heartache, Rebellion and Commitment, to give you some idea of where things are headed right away. The art style reminds me a lot of Dame Darcy, but her work usually had a playful edge that is not present here. Which is why it’s always folly to compare artists doing their own thing roughly two decades apart, I suppose. I’ll confess to not being all that invested in the ongoing narrative of this book, but several pages struck me as being full of wisdom, and not the usual motivational poster level of “wisdom” that’s often mislabeled as such, but beautiful and true things that people should be following in their daily lives. Is there a more tiresome thing that a reviewer quoting such things? Fine, I’ll only indulge myself once: “I’m not an algorithm, I’ll fucking stab you.” Most of them were more about life, muddling through it and being judged by others, but that one really spoke to me. If this seems like a so-so review, it’s more because of my style than the book. If I go back and flip through something a few times after finishing it, like what happened with this book, the author did something very right. Check it out when you’re in an introspective mood, or if you’re ever feeling like being a happy creative person in a constant spotlight is an impossibility. $19.95
