This is a different kind of graphic novel and a different side of James Kochalka than I’ve encountered before. It both reaffirms my love for graphic novels and increases my respect for Kochalka’s mastery his particular genius.

This is an amazing book. It’s hard to say just what it’s about. It has to do with how a person’s past makes his life worthwhile when he becomes old and death is near. There is a natural wish for immortality, but this means putting one’s life in another vessel—the life goes on and the liver is gone. RB only wants to die once his past isn’t his—a past that is more significant because he will die. Without a past, he’s dead (or never existed—has encountered non-being from the other direction—death is an erasure of the past and a return to potentiality). I think that’s what the trippy ending is about. I wonder if JK knows about monads.

This book handles those themes g-novels can do so well (innocent sexuality, childhood thoughts, the commonplace horror of illness and dying).

James does it with aliens, a killer robot, time travel, and a kitty who’s got the logos.

1) Be sure the volume on your iPod is 50-70%.

2) Keep iTrip close to the radio.

3) Adjust your iTrip to an empty station (one that plays static).

This was my first graphic novel. I loved it so much that I developed a taste for the entire genre (particularly autobiographical works). Graphic novels can deal with content that may be trivial, overly sentimental, or grotesque in another form. The graphic novel has allowed art into an aspect of human existence where it has rarely been before—perhaps only in albums by very young, fairly unknown bands which aren’t jaded by experience and still take their youthful emotions seriously, and haven’t begun feeling the pressure to perform or make public images (thinking of first records by Bright Eyes and Green Day). These books are so damn personal without being narcissistic or fraudulent.

Another favorite, in addition to Craig Thompson, is Jeffrey Brown—start with Clumsy (written first, though chronologically second in an autobiographical series).