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Roberts, Keiler – Chlorine Gardens
Years ago I made the decision here to only review physical comics, mostly so I could manage the review submissions. And due to my looking forward to eventually dying after being smothered by a giant stack of toppled comics. Anyway, due to this policy I rarely know how a comic came about unless the artist mentions it somewhere, which is all a long way to go to say that I don’t know how Keiler put together this book. Parts of it seem like they may have come from weekly strips , other bits are longer and more complex. All this makes it tough to judge as a whole, because I don’t know how it came about. So I’m going to ignore that question altogether and instead tackle the quality of the contents. It’s pretty great, everybody! This is a collection of loosely connected stories covering a wide range of events in Keiler’s life. Things start off with the story of the birth of her daughter Xia, how she didn’t get the best advice beforehand, the antics of her doctor and why she put up with him. From there the stories get a bit more scattered (where I’m assuming they’re weekly single page strips), with subjects dealing with when she had to put down her old dog (her line to the other lady in the waiting room has hilariously dark), her various family members and bits of her childhood, and raising Xia and some of her hijinx. From here things get serious, as Keiler gets diagnosed with M.S. This could have been a horrific moment, and it was still deadly serious, but Keiler managed to make a few jokes and her sense of humor about the whole thing (beautifully conveyed through a few conversations with her sister) was fantastic. The diagnosis and her attempts to get other opinions hangs over the rest of the book, but the stories themselves deal with the last days of her grandfather and how she handled it and how she dealt with taking a trip. Even if the format seemed a bit jumbled to me at times, the book as a whole is engrossing, hilarious while being occasionally heartbreaking (sometimes in the same panel) and just a damned entertaining read. If it hasn’t already been nominated for something, there’s a solid chance that you’ll be seeing this title when various awards come back around. $12
