By Nicole Goux (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-72-1 (PB)
Since college, Bobbie has just coasted. Saddled with massive debt, she lives with her lifelong friend and co Ohio U alumnus Clara. She pays her – far less than fair – share of the rent by tending bar in crappy booze-&-music dive The Pig’s Knuckles: beguiled by a lack of professional impetus, and the (constantly never-materialising) promise of a performance slot, someday. There’s late starts and free drinks to offset being harassed by the frat-boy clientele. At least there’s no pressure and plenty of time to work on her songs and it keeps her away from Clara’s ghastly cat Poptart and obnoxious new girlfriend…
Just getting by is bad enough, with manager Richard always stalling her and customers being jerks, but it all gets too much when her ex Carlos comes in with his new trophy trollop and deliberately tries to spoil Bobbie’s day. In response all she can do is drink on the job.
Too smashed to drive – or even hold her keys – Bobbie staggers home and is adopted by the ugliest dog she has ever seen…
She wakes up at home after the strangest dreams, with the mutt happily ensconced and already making trouble.
She calls him Barkley, and he’s an instant wedge between her and Clara, creating utter chaos and revolting messes, tormenting Poptart and somehow taking up so much time that Bobbie even stops writing music. At least he cares about her and always helps alleviate the drudgery and misery of her life…
What Bobbie doesn’t see is how that life is spiralling: slowly changing into something even more petty and desperate…
Eschewing her regular digital process, Eisner-award nominee Nicole Goux (for illustrating DC’s Shadow of the Batgirl) goes old-school and back to pen &-ink basics in Pet Peeves. Unleashing her own narrative notions in a boldly experimental, creepily compelling, itchily abrasive yet understated urban horror story trading marauding monsters for animosity, angst, disappointment and despair, the author presents here a youthful cast who aren’t shallow morons and slasher-fodder in a beastly fable where the protagonist is the victim and the secondary characters slowly turn on each other in a most engaging and appetising way because of an unwelcome new addition to the group…
Deploying imaginative page layouts reminiscent of Ditko’s Mr A and Avenging World, Goux (Forest Hills Bootleg Society, Everyone is Tulip, F*ck Off Squad at Silver Sprocket Bicycle Club) delivers a charming edgy fable about surrendering your dreams that conceals a wicked and chilling shock ending to die for…
© Nicole Goux, 2023. All rights reserved.