I’ve been wondering what Lauren had been working on since I read her Bad Sex comic several years back, but as is often the case with this brain full o’ artists, I often leave it at wondering and not googling. Well, it turns out that she’s five issues into this series that she started way back in 2016, so it is once again confirmed that I’m a big dummy. I’d swear that she hasn’t had a table at CXC for the last few years. Anyway, who cares about that? This one tells the story of Lauren’s past (unless it’s one of those Seth-esque “kind of true but not literally” type of autobio stories), starting with her in an obvious rut and bored silly at school. Another girl asks her if she wants to hang out sometime (at that age when it was just that easy), and Lauren’s life changed considerably. She was introduced to a game called “dare or dare” pretty much right away, which is just what it sounds like: truth or dare without the truth. It immediately got sexual, which sounds about right for high school kids, and which leads later to a belated changing of the rules to ban that kind of thing, as it also had the potential to get rapey in a hurry. The rest of the comic is mostly teenage meandering, with subtle but huge milestones piling up all around her. First time drunk, first time (?) being yelled at by the parents for staying out late, getting the boy she liked stolen out from under her by her own friend, those sorts of things. It feels to me like there’s an undercurrent of distance here, which makes sense considering the fact that Lauren is probably a decade out of high school (I’m guessing based on information in her last book), and it also helps this book from devolving into a coming of age cliche. It’s also the first of five issues (so far), so who knows where things go from here. It’s a hell of a promising start though, and yes, I clearly should have bought more than one issue when I was at Laughing Ogre today. Oh well, now I have an excuse to go back. Oh, and that title? No idea. Maybe it comes into play in a literal fashion later, maybe not. Read more to find out! $6
Posted by Kevin 
