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Mastantuono, Jon – The Guest House

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The Guest House

Hey, it looks like Jon has started using his real name on his comics (he went by Jon Drawdoer before, or maybe he still does sometimes?). I’d know that for sure if I met him at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus this year, but I’m pretty sure I missed a whole room of artists, and it’s certainly not like I’ve been stewing in a quiet rage about that ever since, heavens no! But as Jon makes clear at the start of this comic, it’s best to let everything in, to sit with the good things and the bad, to let them affect you and change you. So I can’t change missing out on him this year, but next year I can keep a better mental guest list in my head and realize BEFORE I leave the building and the con is over that I missed several people that I wanted to see. And hey look, now we’re finally talking about the comic mostly! Jon starts things off by talking about his personal philosophy, how it has gotten him through some tough times, and even if he didn’t come out of those times as exactly the same person as he was before, he could see the value of the changes and make peace with the losses. I’ve talked about this before in my reviews of his other comics, but this is an excellent way to live, and what I try (although not always successfully) to do myself. Even Jon can’t do it all himself, as he goes to a gay support group to help get himself through some issues. It’s there that he hears the story of Trent, a man who fashioned an entire identity for himself and stuck with it far longer than he ever thought he could. Jon also tells his own story at therapy (about being the third in a married couple for three years, how it ended and what he regrets), with all of this eventually leading to Jon asking Trent out. I’m making this sound like a linear, straight ahead story with some messages, but it’s so much more than that. There’s so much more insight on these pages than I know how to convey in a review, nor do I think it’s really my place to do so. Anybody who has doubts about themselves and how they handle the world could do a whole lot worse than to read one of Jon’s comics on the subject. I’m not going to say that Jon has figured everything out, but he’s a lot closer to doing so than most, and I’ve gotten something meaningful out of each of his comics that I’ve read so far. $8