My belief is that it's very hard to understand a mental illness that you haven't lived with or lived through. It's even harder to try to describe it to someone else. As the parent of a special needs child, I have some appreciation for this in concept, and I can freely admit and understand that I have no idea what the author went through as a child dealing with it. I'm going to assume that the story itself is a fictional representation of a very real childhood, as it would be hard to review otherwise.
So, our story centers on Marie, who is a fairly awkward teenage girl, who lives with her mom. Her mom is afflicted with schizophrenia, and her dad is around, but not a factor in her life. Marie's mom appears to be affected not in the Hollywood way, filled with wild delusions and hallucinations, but more with the inablity to think clearly, have real conversations, or even really remember to make dinner. It's this kind of understating that makes this story so powerful -- Marie's mom is clearly ill, but there's very little to point at, no screaming or other widly odd behavior. It's just a pervasive sense of things not being right. Marie's best friend tries very hard to be supportive, and does an admirable job. But there's nothing you can do, as a friend, to replace or fix this kind of unstable homelife.
Layered on this is some cute story about the girls wanting to go see a professional wrestling event, figuring out ways to make some money so that they could travel, and an oddly out-of-place scene of Marie and a wrestling magazine. But the rest of it was pure living, from a sad and quiet dinner with her dad, to rescuing her mother from a fall, or just making spagetti. It was a riveting read in its simplicity. While it's unfair to say that nothing happened, that's true in the normal meaning of the word. What actually happens is life, as it goes for all of us.
Von Allens writing and dialog are excellent, as are his layouts. He did a fine job conveying the sense of confusion Marie's mom was suffereing from, using the panels themselves, and did it in a very understandable way. His stylistic choices were also very compliementary to the story, Marie herself is very "ordinary" looking, and no one is over the top beautiful, fat, or otherwise remarkable. Doing that would be counter to the message the story was trying to convey. There were a handful of times that it seemed he either struggled to draw some of the figures consistently, but the attempt was a worthy one, a comic full of talking heads wouldn't have been nearly as powerful.
In all, an outstanding output, and a very good use of the medium. This would not have worked as a short story, or as a novel. It's the words & pictures that tell the story. |
