The Full Hanawalt: I Want You

I've been comparing each of Lisa Hanawalt's books to her minicomics series I Want You with regard to how far they go with regard to their gags, sheer weirdness, and overall filth. While My Dirty Dumb Eyes, Hot Dog Taste Test, and Coyote Doggirl all have their merits, none of them had quite the same unhinged energy as I Want You. It was with delight and surprise that I learned that D&Q was going to reprint this material, in part because so much of it informs her later design work on BoJack Horseman and her own series, Tuca and Bertie. Sure, it's a shameless cash-in (and the promotion reflects that), but this will be a real eye-opener for Hanawalt fans who never got a chance to read her minis. 

As a bonus, Hanawalt drew a hilarious six-page introduction that also serves as one of the better artist meditations I've read about the relationship an author has with old work. Hanawalt revealing that the work's connection with her relationships and life circumstances at that time sheds a great deal of light on why certain gags may be uncomfortable to revisit, even if a reader has no connection to this information. Hanawalt also praises her younger self for a lot of the material while chastising jokes that feel shallow or easy (like lots of dick jokes). What I've always found interesting about Hanawalt's work is the clear intellect at work in crafting her gags and thinking about the world, but her willingness to go deep into her id in a way that's gross, revealing, frequently unflattering, hilarious, and perverted is fascinating. That's especially true because her process feels so intuitive at times; when she grabs onto an idea, she runs with it and keeps going, well past a point where one expects but never losing the energy of the gag.

Hanawalt opened with a list gag, this time of "Mistakes We Made At The Grocery Store." It's mildly funny and absurd, but other iterations of this form would be more effective later. The real first shot across the bow in this book is "One Day At Work." In a highly naturalistic style, Hanawalt draws herself typing at a keyboard, only to find some of the keys are sticking. The culprits: sex bugs, gumming up the works with their fucking and semen. One of them ejaculates onto her face, which a coworker mistakes for mayonnaise and proceeds to wipe it of her face and eat it (!), which makes Hanawalt puke on the keyboard, which leads to the bugs thanking her for the lube. The rhythm of outrageous calamities at play here and the escalation of events, along with his taboo-busting power, gives this strip its gross power. It is sex, and filth, and gross, hidden things, and violating boundaries. It's a bizarre fantasy of the id, yet one that doesn't seek any victims; it's content in turning that fantasy inward. As I've said before with regard to humor, punching down is simply cruel, punching up can feel like hectoring, but punching yourself is always funny. 

It's not even self-deprecatory humor, either. Just an acknowledgment and celebration of one's own deep weirdness. Not all of it is gross or even internal, as Hanawalt just really likes drawing anthropomorphic characters in a naturalistic style, with particular attention paid to their clothing. The results are bizarre and endearing, and it's this aesthetic which drives much of her animation work. Sex is never far from her mind in these strips, although in the least erotic ways possible. For example, another list strip, "Common Dirty Talk and the Questions It Raises" dives right into that rawest of sexual raw materials, dirty talk meant to inflame desire. Hanawalt instead gets into the gears of it with deliberate reversals, like "You are filthy and your man meat is saltier than anything. Q: Is this really the best time to be criticizing my restaurant?" This is all accompanied by a drawing of a meal. Hanawalt can't help but subvert not just desire, but reality itself.

The ultimate Hanawalt list comic is "Things We Are Sorry We Did Last Night," which includes an item about murdering other Lisa Hanawalts and an extended section about shitty dances she came up with. It's a subversion of "bad decisions" type stories that features top-notch drawings that are inextricably bound with each gag. Even weaker material is boosted by her total commitment to the gag through her drawings, but her mastery of callback humor really comes into play here as well. Overall, there's no separation between writing and drawing for Hanawalt; they are just two complementary aspects of the same form of expression. 

Hanwalt's "Worst Sandwiches" feature really emphasizes her drawing in setting up gags like "Sandwich That Can't Hold You Close At Night" and "Peanut Butter Sandwich That Doesn't Taste Right" (because it's full of maggots). "How To Get A Haircut" presages the sort of work she'd start to do later when she was getting paid to do features like movie reviews. So much of the book isn't even directly gag-related; they are just drawings of things that Hanawalt likes, or the adventures of her BoJack-presaging He-Horse and She-Moose, who are always endeavoring to get laid. In retrospect, the gags in the book represented Hanawalt cycling through comedic interests and laying the groundwork for further refinement. The almostly palpably nervous energy present in these books, the sheer weird horniness and desire to follow her id on the page, was refined and redirected in future work. Rather than go to the id well one too many times, she instead found other ways to follow her funny obsessions, especially as her storytelling became more sophisticated. That said, fans of Hanawalt's work will find this book to be absolutely essential, both because it's as funny as any comics I've ever read and because of the roads she continued to pursue and the avenues she chose to abandon.