It’s a while since I’ve had a book I’ve been able to link to Amazon, and it’s also been a while since I’ve read something this good. And it’s not like I’ve been reading total crap lately, it’s just that every single part of this book was done beautifully by somebody who’s been in the game for many years now, he’s just not somebody I’d heard of. What can I say, I never get to Canada. There are 5 stories collected here, I’m guessing from his mini, Wag!, although I’m probably wrong. These are about (and I’m going to boil it down into as simple of terms as possible) a fat lonely woman living her life, a young woman with a bunch of kids trying to get a simple request fulfilled at a bagel shop, a reluctant hunter having to deal with his unwanted deer carcass, a young waitress trying to reconcile her Catholic faith with the real world around her, and a man who has to face the possibility of taking care of his retarded brother after his mother is taken to the hospital. This is scratching the surface on all of these, and they all deal with heavy, at times brutal themes without ever seeming preachy or morose. Honestly, the sheer depth of the writing here is something that I’ve rarely seen in the comics world. Lots of people seem to skip the idea of captions dictating the thoughts of characters these days, but Joe uses it brilliantly. Happy endings are far from guaranteed here, but real endings are, and that’s plenty for me. Pick this up if you’re losing a little faith in the comics medium in general, it’ll remind you why you started reading these damned things in the first place… $16.95
