It's hard to explain what she's doing and why. A compulsion? Oversharing? Performance? Therapy? Sickness? I think there are elements of all of these things at work here, plus a fiendishly wicked sense of humor and a sense of rising to the occasion as an artist. On the first page, she establishes every key element of the comic. There's the 3 x 4 grid, the light orange spot-coloring that proves to be a crucial visual element, and the grey wash that almost looks liquid in some panels. She also establishes her sense of humor (in one panel, her dialogue argues with her narrative caption) as well as the relationship with the man, named Francesco, with whom she falls in love with. She ends the page with a gag at her own expense, one of dozens in the comic.
Lannes is frank, upfront and unsparing about her sex life--both with regard to her own needs and foibles as well as her partners. She's lonely and horny and gets excited when an old lover texts her ("I'm gonna get a dick appointment!"), only to realize that he's too high to actually have sex. In a comedic sequence worthy of the Marx Brothers in terms of its progression, she sorts through a drawer only to realize that her vibrator ("Roger Rabbit") is out of batteries, and her plug-in Hitachi somehow caught on fire. There's a panel that's perfect in the way it describes her body language as she realizes that she's not up to doing "manual labor", and the last panel is her getting back to work.
Lannes slowly writes through the story of her fitful relationship with Francesco, struggling as a freelancer for companies that get bought and sold and try to slough off the responsibility of paying their invoices. There are Tinder chats that turn into long arguments. There are her attempts at being involved with various socialist groups. The details of her life provide a robust account of what it's like to be young and living in the city as an independent woman. She turns the focus on her sex life that not only zeroes in on the act itself, but also on her feelings about the sex and sometimes awkward conversations before and after. Comparing having sex with Francesco to a Swedish guy she knows provides a vivid and blunt reflection and comparison of the two experiences. Fran is jealous of Laura seeing other men despite the obvious hypocrisy evident in that statement and she pushes back.
After their last time together (they agree to stop because he doesn't want to stop seeing this other woman and won't make Laura his primary partner), the rest of the comic is a series of events where she is miserable and trying to shake it off, with varying degrees of success. There's a fascinating sequence where she goes off to Mardi Gras with a guy she hooks up with when they're both single and coming off a break-up, only they somehow manage to not have sex the entire time they're there. Fran sends Laura an over-the-top, emotional email that she hilariously comments on bit-by-bit. They have a romantic last text session to say goodbye ("Time does what it can, it passes"), which is ruined by the messiness of real life when she has to tell him that a sex partner had passed chlamydia on to her, and he was now at risk. The last page is somehow heart-rending and cruelly funny all at once, where she's crying, then masturbating, and crying while masturbating, then crying out in grief after she orgasms.
Lannes has an acute understanding of the fact that love, sex, and romance are all inherently ridiculous and that there's no dignity whatsoever to be found in their pursuit. At the same time, she has an acute understanding of the importance of intimacy, connecting with someone on multiple levels, and grieving it when it's gone. A self-described "emotional tortoise", she came out of her shell and had a wide range of experiences as a result--most of them painful, but all of them vivid, and created something extraordinary by virtue of being willing to accept the experience for what it was. Combining her skill as a cartoonist, her razor-sharp wit, her ability to create a structure around the experience that any reader could understand turned those experiences into one of the best autobiographical comics I've ever read.
Lannes is frank, upfront and unsparing about her sex life--both with regard to her own needs and foibles as well as her partners. She's lonely and horny and gets excited when an old lover texts her ("I'm gonna get a dick appointment!"), only to realize that he's too high to actually have sex. In a comedic sequence worthy of the Marx Brothers in terms of its progression, she sorts through a drawer only to realize that her vibrator ("Roger Rabbit") is out of batteries, and her plug-in Hitachi somehow caught on fire. There's a panel that's perfect in the way it describes her body language as she realizes that she's not up to doing "manual labor", and the last panel is her getting back to work.
Lannes slowly writes through the story of her fitful relationship with Francesco, struggling as a freelancer for companies that get bought and sold and try to slough off the responsibility of paying their invoices. There are Tinder chats that turn into long arguments. There are her attempts at being involved with various socialist groups. The details of her life provide a robust account of what it's like to be young and living in the city as an independent woman. She turns the focus on her sex life that not only zeroes in on the act itself, but also on her feelings about the sex and sometimes awkward conversations before and after. Comparing having sex with Francesco to a Swedish guy she knows provides a vivid and blunt reflection and comparison of the two experiences. Fran is jealous of Laura seeing other men despite the obvious hypocrisy evident in that statement and she pushes back.
After their last time together (they agree to stop because he doesn't want to stop seeing this other woman and won't make Laura his primary partner), the rest of the comic is a series of events where she is miserable and trying to shake it off, with varying degrees of success. There's a fascinating sequence where she goes off to Mardi Gras with a guy she hooks up with when they're both single and coming off a break-up, only they somehow manage to not have sex the entire time they're there. Fran sends Laura an over-the-top, emotional email that she hilariously comments on bit-by-bit. They have a romantic last text session to say goodbye ("Time does what it can, it passes"), which is ruined by the messiness of real life when she has to tell him that a sex partner had passed chlamydia on to her, and he was now at risk. The last page is somehow heart-rending and cruelly funny all at once, where she's crying, then masturbating, and crying while masturbating, then crying out in grief after she orgasms.
Lannes has an acute understanding of the fact that love, sex, and romance are all inherently ridiculous and that there's no dignity whatsoever to be found in their pursuit. At the same time, she has an acute understanding of the importance of intimacy, connecting with someone on multiple levels, and grieving it when it's gone. A self-described "emotional tortoise", she came out of her shell and had a wide range of experiences as a result--most of them painful, but all of them vivid, and created something extraordinary by virtue of being willing to accept the experience for what it was. Combining her skill as a cartoonist, her razor-sharp wit, her ability to create a structure around the experience that any reader could understand turned those experiences into one of the best autobiographical comics I've ever read.
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