Whit Taylor's Fizzle #3

The third issue of Whit Taylor's story of twenty-something ennui, Fizzle, continues to follow its protagonist Claire as she tries to figure out her life. Fizzle is now being published by Neil Brideau's Radiator Comics, an outfit that's slowly making waves in Miami. Claire works in a tea shop with an overbearing, pompous owner. Her boyfriend is a stoner from a super-rich family. Her boss and her boyfriend represent extremes that Claire is repulsed by. Her boss takes her role as a sort of tea lifestyle expert quite seriously. She is insufferable as she carries her employees in her wake, demanding that they share her enthusiasm. Her boyfriend hates his family's trappings of wealth but has no interests or ambitions of his own. The events of Fizzle chronicle her reactions to these extremes.

In the first two issues, Claire happens upon an idea for her own business: popsicles made from real fruit, with unusual blends. It's all related to her fantasy of being on this entrepreneur reality show not unlike Shark Tank, where investors fund ideas that they like. The third issue takes ideas that were on a slow boil early on and makes them more prominent. In the first part of the comic, her boss holds a tea tasting with the author of a ridiculous self-help book that uses a life jacket as a poundingly obvious metaphor.

The middle of the book details how Claire met her boyfriend Andy in college; not surprisingly, it involved getting high. It's implied that things didn't ever get much deeper than that. There's a well-designed sequence where Claire listens to the self-help book, and it strikes a chord with her. She's not happy with Andy, she fantasizes about her co-worker, and she's desperate to feel passionate about something, anything.

She attends the birthday dinner of Andy's dad and takes a deep breath before interacting with his family. Taylor makes them not so much monstrous as banal, especially Andy's priggish brother Rich. Rich loves his father but also clearly loves being the favored son. Andy plays golf with his dad to appease him but doesn't understand how easily he slips in and out of this life of privilege. The only person who talks to Claire like a person is Andy's grandfather, who takes an interest in her study of fruit. The final scene in the book is her receiving a book on the subject from him.

Andy gets drunk at the party and Claire confronts him on him trying to distance himself from his brother, who is having a fourth child. As dull as Rich is, he knows what he wants: family and material success. When asked point-blank about what he wants, he doesn't know--and then asks her the same question. At this moment, it becomes crystal-clear that a mutual lack of ambition is all that's keeping them together, an orbit of laziness and apathy. It's not his fault that she's chosen to stay in this orbit, but it's clear that she has the capacity to break out of it if she wants to. Receiving the book in the mail not only means important information that she can use, but it also represents an important sense of affirmation. Someone believes in what she's doing and takes it seriously, and this hasn't happened before. We'll see how quickly the plot spins around this one scene. Through it all, Taylor's cartooning is becoming increasingly whimsical and fun to look at, aside from telling the story.