Julie Doucet

A bound mural of words and images unspools via free association doodles of memories and moments, people and places -- a nostalgia wallow really -- from Doucet’s life. It’s like an old-fashioned narrative scroll or moving panorama show, but mostly rando, lacking the purpose, focus, structure, or sheer entertainment value of those works. Admittedly, in the back half a narrative does congeal as Doucet loosely unleashes a tale of stupid love told mostly through endless repetitions of her show more talking head recounting letters and journals and dreams by way of hard-to-follow word balloons as unstructured and random as everything else in the book.

If this weren’t a library book, I’d be tempted to pull the pages free and wrap them around a couple sticks for the full scrolling effect. That little bit of crafting would probably be more satisfying than actually trying to read this thing. show less

The first parts of this -the earliest Dirty Plottes- are dang incredible, a pastiche of teenage grossness and memoir. The combination got a bit tiring for me by the end, but it's easy to imagine why Doucet was such a shock when she burst onto the scene.

graphic fictionalized memoir/art zine (contains nudity, language, adult content)

drawn from the bottom of the page upward and on continuous, accordion-folded pages (gutter placement was sometimes a problem here but wouldn't be if it weren't bound as a book) -- this is more of an experimental art zine than a narrative. Very often hard to read and confusing, with lots of stream of consciousness and nonsequiturs.

recommended for fans of Doucet's and people who enjoy really weird zines, but not show more for casual readers of the mainstream audience. show less

Doucet's dream journal in a comic book is crass, intelligent, offensive, and fun.