Review: Wendy (2014)
At first I didn’t know whether Wendy (the book) and I were going to get along. The comic is about a certified hot mess of a main character whose artistic ambitions are constantly derailed by her alcoholism and poor decisions, and I was worried it would coast along in a kind of shallow, tiresome, “haha look at how dumb she is” mode. The first couple dozen or so pages do feel like that.
But once the book starts treating Wendy (the character) as a complex — though still perpetually wasted — person, it works. Is there character growth? Not really! Is Wendy stuck in an seemingly endless cycle of disappointment and failure, especially because she keeps falling for useless shitty men? Yes! But the comic does feel genuinely interested in Wendy’s emotions and the way she has so many emotions all the time and what is one supposed to do with all these emotions anyway???
Walter Scott’s slapdash chaos cartooning style really works for the story he’s trying to tell. Wendy lives her emotional life right out in the open, and one of the book’s strengths is the sheer number of different ways that Scott draws Wendy’s facial and body expressions. Her highs are REALLY high and her lows are REALLY low, and both of these are reflected in the linework.
While the book is mostly concerned with Wendy, it’s also a satire of young people trying to “make it” in the art world. Wendy drifts around trendy clubs and music venues, listening to terrible faux punk bands with names like “Slut Hut” and haphazardly working on applications to artistic residencies and jobs. Several of her supposed art friends are jealous back-stabbers and the men she hooks up with are worse, and ultimately the awful environment frames Wendy — for all her dysfunction — as positively virtuous. Honestly, the contrast is part of what makes her into an actual character rather than a punchline. She’s a fuck-up but she’s trying and she’s earnest, which is better than 90% of everyone around her.
There are two more volumes (Wendy’s Revenge and Wendy, Master of Art) and I will be reading them!
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