Ah, the wonders of running this website. I read two issues of this series years ago, never picked up another one (because I never SAW another one), then the collection of #6-10 comes in a pile of graphic novels in the mail. And yep: it turns out that this ended up being a pretty great series. There’s no recap in here of past issues, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but I can see why they wouldn’t assume that somebody would pick up the second volume of this without reading the first. So what’s this all about? You can go back and read my reviews of #3 and #4 to get a basic idea of the series (or at least the series as I understood it after reading a couple of issues), and this one picks up where those left off. Joey has woken up from his coma (but he doesn’t remember how he got in that condition) and Kate is “dating” a Catholic who’s so screwed up by her upbringing that she won’t even let Kate touch her. She doesn’t believe in sex until marriage, you see, even though it’s still illegal in most states for gay people to get married. See the difficulty? Other things that happen in this book (as I try to walk that delicate line of telling you enough to get you interested without telling you so much that it’s ruined): Kate takes an internship for the Lavender Alliance (and runs into a reformed bully from her past) and Joey learns more about how he got put into a coma and goes into a bit of a spiral when he gets all the details. Tone is the most important thing about this series and it’s absolutely perfect. Picture the best high school drama you’ve ever scene and then picture it being more than a little bit smarter than that, and you have My Brain Hurts. Oh, and gayer. There are also bonus bit at the back of this, in case you were cool enough to get the whole series when it first came out and you don’t think you need the collection, like sketch pages, a script and an abandoned direction. And a “where are they now” section, but for all I know that was in the last issue of the comic too. So yeah, check it out. If you’re worried about the high school angle, only a few pages of this book even take place in a high school, so don’t be so worried about everything. I just saw the price, and if I wasn’t recommending this highly enough before, this is a measly $6. No excuse in the world not to check it out…
