Review: A Very Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
30 Comics in 30 Days - I’m reviewing a comic every day in November!
Day 11 - A Very Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships by Chelsea Akpan
I picked up this zine today at this year’s Dallas Zine Fest! (The last photo features everything I got there.) It's very thoughtful and cute, both a mini-essay about the nature of online romance and a personal story about the creator's own relationship that started via the internet!
What A Very Brief Inquiry captures really well is the way social mores around online dating have changed in the past few decades. Meeting people ~over the internet~ seems like it was still being disparaged even 10 years ago; but the zine charts a brief history of how we've all gotten more comfortable with the idea since the first appearance of Match.com back in the 90s.
It's not like the current age of Tinder is some dating paradise, but at least the idea of finding someone you can become close to without meeting in person no longer sounds completely outlandish. There's plenty of complexity in this story too: The zine touches some of the darker sides of online romance, like the way digitally naive seniors who are targeted by romance scammers.
I also just found the cover and overall design quite striking! It has nice subtle touches, like crafting narrative text boxes as computer windows (complete with an "x" in the upper right corner to close them).
No word yet on whether the title is a reference to a certain 1975 album. Who knows? Go buy a copy and decide for yourself!
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