By Esther Pearl Watson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-397-2
I first encountered Unlovable when volume 2 turned up unannounced in my review mail-pile last year. I had never heard of the strip nor the magazine Bust where it had run for years, but I’m always in the market for a new graphic experience, so I dutifully sat down and lost myself in the world of a Texas Teen from a long, long time ago…
Ostensibly based on an actual schoolgirl diary the artist found in a gas-station restroom in 1995, these two volumes – as translated and reconfigured by cartoonist Ester Pearl Watson – reveal the innermost thoughts, dreams and experiences of a dumpy, utterly ordinary American girl of the tastelessly intoxicating Eighties – surgically displayed for our examination in a catchy, breathless, effusive warts ‘n’ all style.
In the course of these garish and oddly compulsive tomes we follow the titular “Tammy Pierce†as she goes through the unrelenting daily rollercoaster ride of hormones, social pressure and the twin drives to both stand out and fit in.
From my vantage point twenty years in the future it is crushingly funny and achingly sad. Volume 1 plunges the reader straight into a new term as Tammy goes back to school on August 29th 1988 and is instantly swallowed up by the bizarre and overwhelming world of boys, pimples, a torrent of clothing brands, big-hair bands, adolescent poetry, prank calls and perpetual humiliation from friends and enemies alike – plus the oblivious nature of parents – who just have no clue…!!!
And her obnoxious little brother “Willis the Shrimp†is a complete tool…
The second volume dishes out more of the same as the increasingly sophisticated and mature (I’m pretty sure they’re the words I’m looking for) Miss Pierce endures and survives her Sophomore year of High School, from Christmas Eve 1988 to the Summer of 1989.
When you’re a teenager some things are truly timeless and universal: parents are unreasonable and embarrassing, siblings are scum and embarrassing and your body is shamefully finding new and horrifying ways to betray you almost daily… Your friends can’t be trusted, you’re attracted to all the wrong people and sometimes you just know that no one will ever love you…
Drawn in a two colour, faux-grotesque manner (you can call it intentionally primitive and ugly if you want) the page by page snapshots of a social hurricane building to disaster is absolutely captivating. Although this is a retro-comedy experience, behind her fatuous obsession with fashion, boys, shoplifting, music, curling hair, peer acceptance and traitorous bodily functions, Tammy is a lonely bewildered child that it’s hard not to feel sorry for. Actually it’s equally hard to like her (hell, its difficult to curb the urge to slap her at times) but that is the point after all…
If you live long enough you’ll experience the pop culture keystones of every definitive era of your life at least twice more. The base, tasteless and utterly superficial aspects of 1980s America are back for a new generation which is too young to remember them – but you and I can get all nostalgic for the good bits and blithely ignore all the bad stuff.
Both these big little hardbacks (over 400 pages each and about 15x15cm) comprise a delightful and genuinely moving exploration of something eternal given extra punch with the trappings of that era of tasteless self-absorption, and like those other imaginary diarists Nigel Molesworth, Bridget Jones and Adrian Mole Tammy Pierce’s ruminations and recordings have something ineffable yet concrete to contribute to the Wisdom of the Ages.
Modern and Post-Ironic, Unlovable is unmissable; and now that the entire sorry saga is available in this superb and substantial collectors boxed set, you have the perfect opportunity to discover the how and why of girls and possibly learn something to change your life.
Now please excuse me, I’ve got to turn over my pink vinyl Debbie Gibson Springsteen covers picture disc…
© 2009, 2010, 2011 Esther Pearl Watson. All rights reserved.