So there are a couple of ways to interpret the fact that it took me roughly half of this comic to fully understand that it’s entirely fictional. One is that Janne is such an excellent storyteller that the same thing would likely happen to most people who read this comic. Another is that I’m a gullible rube. Luckily, both things can be true! This is the story of a young woman who’s trying to save up to leave her home town to go to college. She’s working a fairly brutal factory job at a candy factory and saving even more money by living with her grandmother, and we learn a couple of facts about candy factories that are more than a little gross and alarming (unless they’re entirely made up too; I can no longer trust my own judgment). One day her boss makes an offer to her: he needs a truckload of gummy worms disappear so he can get the tax write-off, and he needs somebody to do the dirty deed. Since her main goal in life is to get as much money as quickly as she can, she has no real choice but to agree to the scheme. She dumps them in the woods, but unfortunately a massive rainstorm washes them away and right back through town, where they’ve mixed with some other chemicals in the river and have puffed up to massive sizes. The story becomes a global phenomenon, she’s mortified and avoids work for a few days before finally deciding to face the music… and finds her life completely changed, but not in the way she was expecting. The rest of the comic showcases her new skill set and the whole story is told as a confessional that gets to the bottom of what really happened. See? Plausible that I could have bought into it! Check it out, it’s a hell of a story, and you can figure out if you would have fallen for it too without some advance warning. Be honest! $8 (or $22 for a set of four comics)
