About this item
The latest book full of "Ernie Pook's Comeek" installments features fewer of the emotional storms of early adolescence than My Perfect Life (1992) , arguably Barry's best collection. It's more about what impinges on late-1960s midteener Maybonne Mullen than what she initiates, and it's got much more of the stories Maybonne's irrepressible younger sister, Marlys, writes and draws as well as some by their brother, Freddie. The boy's arrival to live with his sisters at Grandma Mullen's (he'd been with an aunt since his mother's breakdown) is one of the momentous happenings these four-panel strips record. Others are the brief return of Uncle John, whom the sisters adore even though he's gay; the night Maybonne's friend Cindy loses her virginity to the "new boys from the Catholic school"; reading Cindy's letters from a former boyfriend, a high-school dropout now in the army in Vietnam; being called back to live with Mom again and getting there on the bus; and when Maybonne returns to her old school, finding her old friend Brenda has been telling wild stories about her.
About the Author
Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. She is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip that was syndicated scross North America in alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook's Comeek featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy, as well as the books One! Hundred! Demons!, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!, The Good Times are Killing Me which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governor's Award. Her bestselling and acclaimed creative writing-how to-graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly, What It Is, won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. D Q plans to publish a multivolume collection of Ernie Pook's Comeek, Barry's next prose novel, and the follow up and creative drawing companion to What It Is, November 2010's Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book.Born in Wisconsin in 1956, Lynda studied at Evergreen State College.
