There are times when I regret that running this website for the last 14 years has changed the ways that I find and read comics. In the old days, back when I was reading comics just to read them, I would have probably heard of this series as it came out and followed it that way. Since I constantly have a stack of review comics to get to I rarely have the time to go searching for new series, so this ended up being completely new to me. Which isn’t a bad thing, as it works incredibly well as one half (ish) of a whole story, but it would also have been fun to see it evolve and change over time. Eh, if that’s my biggest problem right now that must mean that I’m leading a pretty trouble-free life. Anyway, hi comic! This is the first volume (of two) of Mardou’s series about a young girl growing up in northern England. It’s mesmerizing, as that period of life for most people is chock full of stories and events, and Mardou navigates them all brilliantly. I’m assuming that this is fiction until I hear otherwise, but things start out with Iris’s (the main character) stepfather inviting some Jehovah’s Witnesses inside, basically to mess with them. They come back when he’s not home and end up legitimately converting her mother, who then does her level best to convert Iris, who, at 16, is content to go along with it for a little while so as not to make waves. But it’s also around this time that she discovers Sartre, which gets her questioning the point of everything, which gives her the courage to tell her mother that she’s no longer interested in this religion. That particular blow-up is raw and sadly much too realistic, as everybody knows that recent religious converts are often the most fanatical. From there Mardou gradually comes to a kind of peace with her family (her stepdad thinks the whole thing is funny, mostly, although it clearly gets on his nerves at times) and Mardou is growing up and moving on to college, although still living at home, which is always problematic. This is a case of the journey being the whole point, so I’m not sure how much more I should dig into here. She gets into drugs a bit, but is indifferent to it until one specific case of it working as well as she could have hoped. She gets her heart broken, but sets her sights on another boy, kind of, and that goes about as smoothly as your average teenage relationship. And the last chapter is insidious in the way it convinces you that everything is fine with her, that she has come to some serious realizations about the world, before… ah, see? Shouldn’t really get into it. I’ll just say that I can’t wait to see what happens in the next volume, although I guess I could always seek out the comics instead of waiting for a review copy. Either way, I recommend this first volume unreservedly. If the biggest problem with a book is the fact that I didn’t like that it ended, I’d call that a success. $17.95
