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Barnett, Lauren – Me Likes You Very Much

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Me Likes You Very Much

It’s unprofessional in the extreme for me to write a review that’s just a long, small childlike squeal of delight, isn’t it? Damn. Perhaps you’re one of the smarter comics readers who has known about Lauren’s comics for some time now, in which case you’re as excited as I am that she’s finally getting a big old book full of these comics of hers. For those of you who have never heard of her, boy are you in for a treat, as this is about 190 pages of pure goodness and light. And, happily, that cover gives several (smaller) examples of her work. If you can manage to read all of those small comics without laughing, you are hereby excused from buying this book. And from having the capacity for joy, you soulless monster you. For everybody else, like I said, you’re in for a treat. Maybe you’re on the fence somehow and I should at least try to make a coherent case for this book, so I’ll give it a shot. Lauren’s comics are generally between one and three panels long and usually involve talking animals. Or lighters, or salt, or many different kinds of food, or just about anything that could conceivably have a mouth and a couple of eyes attached to it. And they’re funny. Really, damned near all of them at least made me smile, and a really solid chunk of them had me actually laughing out loud, which is still a rarity even after all these years of reading these “funny books.” I should point that at least a few of these strips were already published in some of her mini comics over the last few years, but a good chunk of them are in color here, which was not the case for her minis, and wouldn’t you rather have them all in one place anyway? Sure you would. As I really don’t want to ruin anything about the actual strips (why rob you of the joy of discovery?), I’ll stick to the margins. The hamburger asking on the back page if the people quoted praising her book were lying? Well, it’s always impressive if you get a laugh out of me when the book itself is over. Speaking of that, she does have a few random strips before and after the book actually starts, so there’s bonus stuff for you to enjoy. I also loved her chapter listings almost as much as the fact that she actually had an increasingly desperate eggplant (as he realized the reader was approaching the end of the book) introducing the nonsensical chapters. Look, what you have here is a big old book full of the funny, put out by a publishing company that’s just starting out and could use the encouragement, and put together by a woman who’s funnier than most humans have any right to be and who really deserves a big old pile of money for her effort. Help these folks out with that please! $14