This is a comic about a series of relationships that started online that more or less went well. Mostly! With a lot of caveats! Matt would probably disagree with that assessment, but it’s possible I’ve seen too many comics with horror stories of online dating (and my own, occasionally less than delightful experiences) to be able to be an effective judge of this sort of thing. And, as always with autobio comics, I’m not sure if all of this is 100% true or rounded up to make a better story. Anyway! This one starts off as Matt is getting out of a long term relationship and hesitantly joins the world of online dating. He starts seeing a woman who isn’t exactly his type, but things are going well so he doesn’t want to blow things up. She then suggests that they start dating each other exclusively, which is right around when we learn that he’d also been seeing two other women casually while this was happening. As we get caught up on what we missed when he was describing how the situation with the first woman began and developed, it ends up with Matt having to make a choice: either pick one and stay the serial monogamist that he’d always seen himself as, or take things in a less exclusive direction. And, as is always the case in any kind of relationship, that decision wasn’t entirely up to him. The rest of the book is mostly how these relationships wrapped up, who he ended up choosing, how that went, his thoughts and feelings as they all went down, etc. It’s not as wrapped in self-pity as some of these dating comics are, but he’s open and honest about the whole thing and doesn’t even try to make himself the hero of the piece. And, speaking as somebody who’s been living in a new area for a couple of months and will have to hop back on the dating apps myself soon, it’s nice to see this sort of thing work out, at least for a little while. If you’ve been on the online dating trip you’ll find something to laugh or cry about in here, and if not, check it out to laugh at the rest of us suckers. $14
