I’ve started this new tradition at cons where if I get to the table for Floating World Comics while I still have money to spend, I’m getting a random graphic novel. Sure, I could spend five minutes going through them to make it less random, but then I’d inevitably want to get half a dozen of them, and since they mostly sell graphic novels and my billionaire benefactor has yet to appear, this seems like a bad idea. I mention all of this to say that I didn’t know a thing about Emma’s work before reading this book, and flipping through it at home made me wonder why I picked it. At first glance the art is crude, but after reading it I’ve revised my opinion of the art upward (it’s sparse, but lush when it needs to be, and it’s not like the many panels of Egbert thinking about his lot in life need lavish backgrounds). But the story more than makes up for anything else I might think is lacking. This is the story of Egbert, a thoroughly miserable dude who only finds meaning in his bird-watching habit. But he’s terrible at that too, consistently being the one with the fewest sightings in his club. Even in his club of kinda sorta societal rejects he stands out as pathetic, and he’s consistently unpleasant enough that he doesn’t evoke any kind of sympathy from his peers. We spend a whole lot of time with Egbert in his (completely alone) home life, where he actually puts himself through “training” to become a better bird watcher (I’m not going to spoil this wonder by revealing his methods), talks a lot about (and to) his “online therapist,” and falls in love with anybody who’s even slightly nice to him (but he doesn’t seem to have much of a idea of what love is). I was settling in for another comics tale of a sad sack loser when something happens that changes the whole dynamic: Egbert finds a severed hand in a tree. Suddenly he has the respect of his peers, has an interview scheduled on the news, and overall thinks this is his big chance to make a splash. And, predictably, it fizzles out; there was never a realistic chance of the evening news airing a long interview with a guy who found a hand. But now Egbert has the itch and knows what he has to do to get attention, so how far will be go to chase that high? It’s a genuinely funny book on top of all of that; the recurring gag of him being called a creep because he was walking around everywhere with binoculars surprised me several times, as did his habit of completely forgetting that he owned a cat. I wouldn’t call it a laugh riot, but it’s an engrossing and balanced read, and Egbert even gets the confrontation he was dreaming about by the end. Check it out, it also turns out that Emma has several other books available, so my graphic novel purchase might be a little less random next year. $20
Posted by Kevin 
