What It Is

"I loved to copy comics at night in front of the tv. I liked ballpoint pens on notebook paper and a show on I didn't care about. Sometimes I drew with the radio on. It was a form of transportation. I did it because it helped me to stay by giving me somewhere else to go.

Maybe this is why we draw shapes in the margins during meetings or on the backs of envelopes when we're waiting on the phone. Drawing can help us to stand to be there. That, alone, is something. Give a kid a crayon and some paper when they are stuck waiting somewhere. Somehow it changes things. How?"

-pg. 105 ( )

This book is a touching collage of thought fragments, pictures, questions and doodles from a troubled child and creative adult. Musings on creativity, dance, writing, remembering, and self-expression.

A treasure trove of inspiration and laughs. Lynda Barry is an absolute hoot! ( )

I wish I'd waited for the paperback. The content is great, but the hardcover version--as is usual in books with mostly graphic content--is (or was) high. ( )

Lynda Barry's latest is more of an artist journal/workbook than a comic book. There are only about thirty pages, maybe, of comics, which are very close to the style and autobiographical content of One Hundred Demons. The loose story of the comics, the surrounding pages, and the instruction manual for journaling that takes up the book's final third, surrounds the maturation of both Barry's creative process and her burgeoning childhood self-consciousness. In the workbook "section", she tries to dissuade us from becoming similarly blocked up and self-conscious. The exercises therein sound all right, though, perhaps, seem like they would be a little stronger for the writing process than the drawing process. My biggest beef with the book is in the pages that are neither comic book or workbook. Made up of collage and watercolor paintings, they have a magical, mysterious quality to them As objects of art, they're great (if a little muddy-looking in the reprinting), but after pages and pages of them, they sort of run together and lose their charm. ( )