Do you have no actual idea how you really feel about romance in general?

If you go back and forth about loving and hating the whole idea of being in a relationship, Liz Prince has you covered.

A collection of mostly humorous autobiographical comics, Alone Forever (Top Shelf, 2014), chronicles Prince’s adventures in love and lack thereof. She crushes on every boy with a beard she sees (there are many!) and cuddles with her cats. It’s a playful look at modern romance.

Prince never shies away from making herself look silly. Her detailed descriptions of outfits (usually including unwashed hoodies and band T-shirts) provide a certain self-awareness about why she’s unlucky in love. But she also shares the dates that go well and the dates that go just OK. It’s not just comics about feeling sorry for herself. Even in her darker moments, she keeps a sense of humor and in her brighter moments, her joy is clear. I love that it’s a refreshingly full picture of a life.

Since they’re autobiographical comics, a few feel do feel a bit tossed off and rough, as if it was just a quick attempt to get a moment down, diary-style. But Prince’s style is warm and friendly, and there’s a bold sweetness to the way she draws herself, her friends and her love interests. Prince feels like someone you know (or she may remind you a bit too much of yourself), and her comics feel like hanging out with a friend.

It’s maybe a bit slight but it’s a quick, fun book to read. Alone Forever is going to be what you need this Valentine’s Day, whatever your opinion of the holiday is. No matter your success in love, you’ll find a kindred spirit here.

Jess Fink‘s We Can Fix It (Top Shelf, 2013) is subtitled “A Time Travel Memoir” and she focuses on this very premise. The time-travel motif provides a creative frame for her to revisit various events and people in her life.

Initially, while hopping through time, she’s mostly checking in on  her teenage and college-age self, both to aid and prevent (and sometimes observe!) various sexual encounters. However, that wears thin pretty quickly and she wonders what other lessons she can offer to her past self. She drops in on herself in middle school and even younger and begins to realize the way she remembers the past wasn’t how it always happened.

Fink’s art has a curvy sweetness that always keeps the book playful. Despite many comments about future Fink’s awesome jumpsuit (which it is!), that’s really the only sci-fi touch. Mostly, Fink’s soft lines and gray washes render scenes from the early ’90s and beyond with a kind nostalgia. I greatly admire Fink’s ever-changing hairstyles and fashionable flair throughout the ages. The affection she has for her younger self clearly comes through in her drawing. Fink is adorable at all ages.

It’s a wickedly funny book with just enough touches of vulgar and gross-out humor. It works here, though, since this is all about being in Fink’s head and her unguarded honesty is a delight. While sex and sexuality initially drives the story, it quickly becomes about so much more. It’s absolutely as touching as it is profane. It feels delightfully human.

And in the end, that’s the point of this journey. The more often Fink visits and chats with earlier versions of herself (and often brings them along in her journey), the more she realizes that that she can’t fix the past because it doesn’t really need to be fixed. All her experiences — the good, the bad, the confusing — made her into the person she is today.  It’s a kind-hearted and beautiful reflection on an imperfect life.

• Berlin 2013: Lakeshore To Adapt ‘The Sword’ Graphic Novel, Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter
• Warren Bernard’s Citations and Fredric Wertham Documents, The Comics Journal Online
• Reviewing your local shops: Third Eye Comics, Bryan Sinagra, ABC2News.com

Announcements:

• DC Conspiracy opens a centralized online store
• Civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis to launch graphic novel trilogy in August
• Metro Washington Mensa’s upcoming gathering will have a superhero them

Publications:

• Magic Bullet is accepting submissions and advertisers through March 1.
• The Cartoon Picayune, a comics journalism zine, is now accepting advertisers for the Summer 2013 issue. Inquire at cartoonpicayune@gmail.com.

Events:

• Now through Feb. 22: “Splotch/Asterisk” — collaboration between Steve Loya and JJ Cromer, Off-Rhode Studios, Washington, D.C.
• Now through Aug. 18: ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore, Md.
• Feb. 21: Nicole Georges (of Invincible Summer), Cassie Sneider, Monica Gallagher, Sally Madden at 7 to 9 p.m. at Atomic Books, Baltimore, Md.
• Feb. 22: Super Art Fight, doors 9:30 p.m. at Black Cat Backstage, Washington, D.C. Tickets are $12 and on sale now.

Have comic news or events related to the D.C. area to share? Email me! Submit no later than Monday at 9 p.m. for inclusion each Tuesday, but the earlier, the better! More information is here.

Gingerbread Girl
Buy at Powells.com

Annah Billips is an unreliable narrator in Gingerbread Girl (Top Shelf, 2011). Of course, she’s not really the only one who’s unreliable here. In their graphic novel, Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover play with identity, sanity and what makes us who we are.

Annah, when she first introduces herself to readers, is in her underwear and says she’s a tease. She says she dates both men and women but is reluctant to label herself as bisexual. Annah may be slight manipulative — she tells readers she’s made two dates and she’s going to go out with whoever shows up first — but Coover draws her in such an adorable way, it’s all too easy to understand why she gets away with it. Annah is presented as someone who thinks she’s more seductive than she actually is.

The bulk of the story involves Annah’s belief that her father separated her Penfield homunculus from her brain and created a sister, Ginger, from it. Annah’s been on a quest to find this sister, who is, more or less, the keeper of her physiological senses. Annah’s story is not only told by her, but by her more-or-less girlfriend, Chili; Annah’s other date, Jerry; a fake psychic, Alphonse Spectra; a doctor, Greg Curling; and a few others — including a couple of animals and bystanders.

It all sounds pretty metaphorical but that’s part of Tobin’s and Coover’s purpose here. We all divide ourselves into pieces, and it’s ultimately the people who love us despite our fragments that are worth it. Is Annah crazy? Did she really have a mad-scientist father who made a sister out of a part of her brain? Does it matter?

While Coover was clearly the artist here and Tobin the writer, the book feels like a true collaboration. Coover’s art does carry the story — her characters, especially her women, are cute and appealing and the black, white and sepia tones give imbue the book with a mysterious and shadowy quality. Tobin’s dialogue is playful and he doesn’t shy away from the absurd. By putting some of these points in the mouths of pigeons or petty thieves, it keeps the story from feeling overly serious even when it is.

Maybe in the end, people who are who they are. You can put up with the fact your girlfriend is possibly crazy and a tease because you like enough other things about her. You know enough other things about her. Maybe, in the end, we’re all still growing and changing and that’s all that matters. And I like that’s what Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin had to say. I’d love to read more about Annah (she is a tease, after all, so you want to), but I’m happy to know her in whatever way this book allowed me to.

(You can read the whole book here at Top Shelf’s site, but it’s a really lovely book to actually physically hold and read.)

Two notes that are only tangentially related to the book:

• I was planning on making the switch over to Powell’s partner program anyway, but since Annah and Chili both worked at Powell’s Books, this seems like an appropriate time to start.
• And since I did buy this at Big Planet yesterday, I feel completely justified in linking to the “The Alternative Endings to Laika Show” just in case you happened to miss it when I linked to it about 500 times earlier today.