Ilike Merey

Eh, 2.5 stars? It was hard to get into at the beginning---the text was hard to read (especially the chapter titles! jeez!) and the panels and dialogue often failed to flow, leaving me lost and confused in the middle of the page. I'm not sure if it got better towards the middle or if I just got used to having to look at each page a little longer to understand what was going on. The characters are hard to tell apart, despite their distinctive hair, and most are skeletally thin... just the style?

When I was in high school I was superficially a lot like the characters---did art, didn't think of myself as queer at the time but had crushes on one or two gay guy friends, was/am a 6'2" girl, one of a few Jews---but I found myself shaking my head at the connections more than nodding. My squareness is probably the biggest source of disconnect; I didn't ever aspire to wear safety pins in my nose, and it wasn't for lack of role models.

While I didn't like the package it was wrapped in, the story itself is... fine. You know, a romance... but I wasn't into the characters enough to find it compelling. A little outside the ordinary... but not far enough outside the ordinary to justify how excited LGBTQ booklists are getting over it. Everyone has ISSUES with a capital I, and most of them are dropped rather than resolved. There were weird, extremely vague suggestions of child abuse, incest, sexism, disordered eating, mental illness, drug abuse, etc., but they were more "color" than character development. The first ending is fairly solid; the unnecessary epilogue muddles everything again.

If you weren't (or didn't aspire to be) a bullied goth/punk/whatever with artsy pretensions who went to a lot of crazy parties where you did regrettable things, or if you don't get excited about the art style by flipping through it, I don't recommend pursuing this one.… (more)

Very good! Really, just a typical teenage love story, following the classic storyline, but with a refreshing look into the complexities of sexuality and gender identity, where everything isn't always black and white (Thank you!) The author does a great job of developing the two main characters (something that isn't always accomplished satisfactorily in graphic novels, in my opinion) so that the path their relationship eventually takes is believable and realistic. Also, the artwork, layout, and use of fonts is gorgeous!… (more)

a e 4EVER is a well told story of two high school genderfreaks. The story has everything from identity politics to punk rock (or from lipstick to PVC). The illustration style is perhaps too grungy for my aging taste, and requires a bit of getting used to in the beginning. But I cannot really imagine this story illustrated any other way. The sharp edges, the dark corners, the growling faces all fit perfectly. Part coming-of-age, part coming-out-and-staying-in, part music dump, and part high school drama, a e 4EVER is all that teenage love stories wish they were: edgy, real, smart, funny, and very sexually aware.

Recommended for fans of Potential (Ariel Shrag) and Revolutionary Girl Utena (I know, strange pairing...) Also try Spit and Passion, and Blue is the Warmest Color (though you will find that a e 4EVER is in a higher league than these two in terms of the real gender/orientation issues and sexuality content).… (more)