Why Don’t You Love Me?
Cartoonist: Paul B. Rainey
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Published: January 2023
Why Don’t You Love Me? by Paul B. Rainey is probably the primary must-read graphic novel of 2023, and the way in which you should learn it, in my view, is by going into the e-book blind.
Don’t learn any promo information about it. Don’t search for takes on Twitter, and, fairly frankly, it’s best to pause studying this very overview (though, I’m going to bop round spoilers for a bit, so possibly learn till the massive bolded spoiler warning partway by means of).
Why Don’t You Love Me? is with out query a particular e-book, one which performs with expectations to nice impact. Part of the expertise of the e-book is presuming it to be about one factor, after which one other, after which one other, and having all of your preconceived notions stomped and twisted and in the end shined into one thing higher and new. There’s a good way to sum this e-book up, however, sadly for me, a greater author did it and put it on the again of the e-book.
This excellent blurb is from Neil Gaiman: “When I began to read Why Don’t You Love Me? I thought it read like any number of slightly surrealistic slightly vapid early-2000s stories that were basically the cartoonist’s way of telling you they hated everyone and everything. And then it came into focus and it wasn’t that thing at all. And then it came into focus again, uplifting and heartbreaking and (a word that I use sparingly) relevant. The kind of story leading to a last panel that’s all pain and job and delivers the whole thing. What a masterwork. To understand all is to forgive all.”
That’s an ideal approach to describe Why Don’t You Love Me?, a tragicomic chameleon of a comic book and, as Gaiman notes, a masterwork from Rainey.
WARNING: SPOILERS
On the floor, the primary act of Why Don’t You Love Me? reads as kind of an old style newspaper strip a couple of couple, a really dangerous couple. A pair dangerous at parenting and dangerous at being married. With the title of the e-book showing on every web page as if it’s a Sunday strip, this one opens like a well-recognized albeit darker riff on the household. It expertly builds that expectation after which makes use of it to have interaction the reader because it plunges towards one thing new. Here’s an instance of a typical web page…
As this story progresses, it turns into one thing a lot deeper (and at occasions darker), in the end feeling experimental for a bit earlier than rounding into a whole and profitable coherent narrative predicated on the reader studying what’s actually happening alongside the characters. The e-book is sort of a novel with an in depth third individual perspective, with its viewers locked on the 2 central characters, experiencing what’s actually happening proper alongside them. Newspaper-esque gags persist, however as a byproduct of the particular story. It makes you re-evaluate a sure sort of comedian, imagining what could be beneath them. It’s nothing in need of sensible, to be frank.
One recurring joke, for instance, is that the daddy doesn’t bear in mind the son’s title (Tommy? wait, no, Charlie? bah). But even this seemingly callous bit will get explored ultimately, tied into one thing tragic and incredible. It’s as if an inexpensive veneer falls away slowly on this e-book, looking back by no means having been there in any respect. Rainey baits comics readers, twists them, and delivers a narrative so participating, these readers can be grateful to have been toyed with.
There are pivots that occur a number of occasions by means of this e-book, the kind of pivots that make sense but are inconceivable to see coming. The result’s a story that’s compulsively readable, a wormhole puzzle field comedian that you could’t cease serious about till you’ve got unraveled all of it.
In the method, Why Don’t You Love Me? raises questions on who we’re, who we could be in numerous circumstances, and the way we reply to the grand or unknowable. Perhaps, Rainey posits, a few of us are locked into bygone selections we not assist, maybe we want a brand new begin, maybe what we yearn for can be an excessive amount of in order to interrupt us, or maybe we’re simply too small to actually grasp the character of all of it. Ultimately, what emerges from this story are grand questions on communication and understanding, delivered in a rewarding and highly effective means.
With a comics resume that spans many years, Rainey is a seasoned cartoonist, and this e-book appears like — once more, as Gaiman factors out — a real masterwork, the rigorously thought of opus of somebody who has spent years working inside the medium and needs to push what it’s able to. It’s January, in fact, however except recency bias works towards it, Why Don’t You Love Me? needs to be on most each Best of 2023 checklist come December.
Why Don’t You Love Me? is accessible now from Drawn & Quarterly.
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