Sarah Andersen's hugely popular, world-famous Sarah's Scribbles comics are for those of us who boast bookstore-ready bodies and Netflix-ready hair, who are always down for all-night reading-in-bed parties and extremely exclusive after-hour one-person music festivals. In addition to the most recent Sarah's Scribbles fan favorites and dozens of all-new comics, this volume contains illustrated personal essays on Sarah's real-life experiences with anxiety, career, relationships and other adulthood challenges that will remind readers of Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half and Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened. The same uniquely frank, real, yet humorous and uplifting tone that makes Sarah's Scribbles so relatable blooms beautifully in this new longer form.
I loved Adulthood is a Myth, so pretty much as soon as I finished reading it, I checked this one out of the library. It’s similar to the first collection – and that is not a bad thing! – in that most of the book is one-page standalone comics. However, there’s a few longer… articles, almost? – at the end which are text along with a series of connected comics. My favorite is the story about how she went from being frightened and skeptical of the internet cult of cats into being a indoctrinated into their feline wonder, thanks to cat sitting for her mom. But, to be fair, it was hard to pick a favorite as pretty much all of the comics made me laugh, just because they are so adorably relatable.
As before, there’s lots about dealing with society’s conflicting messages about womanhood, general geekiness, and books. Ms. Andersen is as insightful as always, pulling apart the stresses of modern life and presenting them in a way that had me relating to almost every comic. A lot of them deal with authenticity – that struggle of being “natural” but also, somehow, keeping all the messy stuff hidden.
(I’m sorry – that little superhero dance move in the fourth panel cracks me up every time.)
Societal commentary aside, there’s also comics that are pure hilarity. Why, yes, an angry uterus running around with a chainsaw is the perfect personification of my period.
I’d love to include more samples, but at some point you just need to say – go read this book! Honestly, I think it took longer to pick my three favorite comics to include in this post than to read the whole thing! Highly recommended!
