By Moa Romanova, translated by Melissa Bowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-68396-283-0 (HB/Digital edition)
Scandinavian artists and authors seem to have a real knack for combining comics with therapy and producing truly memorable books you really want to tell your friends about. Like this one…
Stockholm resident and dog-lover Moa Romanova (Moa Johanna Strinnholm as was) came into the world in 1992 in Bollstabruk, Kramfors Municipality, Sweden. She’s an artist and musician who studied painting at the Gothenburg School of Fine arts before becoming a worthy graduate of the wonderful Malmö Comic Art School. She’s done a whole bunch of other stuff too, such as fanzine On Tour and second graphic novel På glid (Off the Rails). Today, though, let’s plug her multi-award-winning debut graphic novel which English-language readers can see as Goblin Girl. Available in at least seven languages so far, it started life as Alltid Fucka Upp when first published in Sweden by Kartago förlag.
The Goblin in question is a young woman of artistic temperament and ambitions who suffers from crushing panic attacks and other contemporary insecurities. Despite being broke and stuck in a grotty squat over a shop, she’s getting by, thanks to mum, friends and a counsellor I personally wouldn’t give house room…
Looking for love – aren’t we all? – she hooks up online with a minor TV celeb who’s far too old for her, but at least he seems to listen. It’s not undying passion, but in the absence of anything better…
He seems to want nothing, and validates her life …even offering to sponsor her art career. Are things finally looking up? Aren’t there always strings attached?
And so, her life progresses via drink, panic attacks, other people, concerts, social services, work, no work, body issues, relationships, fraught travel, psych evaluations and admissions: all the crap making up a modern life if you’re not born perfect but still have a brain to be unhappy and discontented with…
Dealing with contemporary life, mental health issues and the inescapable problem of unequal power dynamics in all relationships in an uncompromising but astonishingly steady – if not upbeat – manner, Goblin Girl (available in breathtaking oversized hardback or digital editions) is a remarkable testament and to modern living and appraisal of the costs involved, beautifully drawn in a deliberately ugly way and deeply, inescapably moving. You won’t all like it, those who do won’t like all of it and those of you who take it on will read it over and over again and still come away wanting more…
© 2020 Moa Romanova. English translation © 2020 Melissa Bowers. This edition © 2020 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.