2-10-09

Get Off My Lawn!

Okay, a couple minor personal notes before I get on with the review:  First, I'm sure you've heard about the fires raging across central Australia.  They're extremely bad, not only because they're just huge and have already more or less erased a couple of towns, but because Australia doesn't normally get that kind of action, and they seem to be having trouble getting them under control.  I'm not asking anyone to donate anything to anyone; that's a personal choice and no one needs the pressure, especially if they can't afford to do so, but, if you can and want to, I would suggest donating to the International Red Cross, who will see that the funds you donate get to the right places and people.

The other minor point, also has to do with fire, but on a much smaller scale.  Darcy and Matt Sowers, of Codename:  Hunter, suffered a small electrical fire last month.  This set them back on a few fronts, not the least of which was the discovery that they'll have to rewire their entire house.  Again, I'm not fishing for donations, here, or asking anyone to do anything they wouldn't normally do.  For one thing, the Sowers haven't requested assistance, and I wouldn't insult them by suggesting I knew the level of their needs more than they do.  However, if you've been thinking of buying a subscription to Codename:  Hunter, now would probably be a good time to do so.  If you haven't been by there, click the link above and give the comic a look.  It's certainly worth your time, and a sub (which includes color comics and a storyline an issue in advance of the free site) may well be worth your dime.  Most of all, forbearance is required.  They lost data and connections in the mayhem surrounding the fire, and even before the fire, Darc was showing symptoms of repetitive stress in her drawing arm, so the stress of having jackasses constantly bitch because CN:H hasn't updated in a couple of weeks probably won't help.  So, while you don't need to donate or even subscribe, you do need to not be an ass about things (not that you would).

Okay, so, on to the review, which would be easier to right if I wasn't such an old, out-of-it geezer.  Okay, maybe not old, but certainly middle-aged.  In fact, tomorrow, I will be forty-five, and, while I've always liked to think of myself as sort of semi-hip (for an old guy), every now and then, something slaps me in the face with how totally out of it I am.  Like Grampa Simspon once said, "I used to be 'with it'.  Now, what I'm 'with' isn't 'it', and what is 'it' is weird and scary to me."  I get reminders of my lack of hipness every time I surf the web.

But never more so than when I tripped over Danielle Corsetto's Girls with Slingshots.  To begin with, the fact that I didn't even know this comic existed is a huge smack in the head.  GWS has been around since about three weeks before the first Casual Notice debuted.  I don't even have the excuse that it's one of those hipster alternative comics that flies beneath the mainstream radar.  GWS has been reviewed a lot, and has even won more than a few awards.  So, yeah.  I totally missed.

Once I did discover the comic, however, I got an even bigger slap in the face.  A slap that said, "You've lost touch.  You don't get it.  You probably never will."  Maybe I should explain.

GWS is a slice-of-life comic about a group of just-out-of-college friends living in a smallish college town.  The main characters are, of course, two girls:  Hazel and Jaime.  All that's pretty standard for a webcomic.  What isn't standard, at least to my geriatric eyes, is the level of ... um...hmm...let's go with "sexual honesty"...in the strip.  These girls like sex.  They like sex a lot—even the technically virginal Jaime—and they discuss and pursue it with a focus and intensity generally attributed to guys (at least in my generation), but which guys never actually reach in reality (at least in my generation). 

And that's where it's kind of weird for me.  My generation grew up in the last silken shreds of the cocoon woven by fifties morality and repression.  Sure, Playboy and Cosmo were constantly telling us that girls liked sex as much as boys; heck, at the time, Playboy was telling us that even when a girl said, "No," she really meant, "Yes, but I don't want you to think I'm a slut."  But the reality, for us, was that even if girls did like sex (and I can't imagine why they would, considering our fumbling, amateurish, and—frankly—selfish attempts at performance), they never discussed it, at least not in earshot.

But here we have girls walking openly into sex shops and strip clubs, discussing and comparison shopping for marital aids like they would a pair of black pumps (okay, that part isn't so shocking), and pursuing sex fairly aggressively.  The whole thing would seem an unbelievable fantasy cooked up by geeky desires if not for two things.  First, GWS is a comic about women by a woman.  And second, the writing supports the sexual elements without any real flirtation with prurience.  Even with my old-person expectations, there was never a point in the archive where I said to myself, "This isn't believable."  The plot, the characters, and the progression of themes, all remain true to themselves and to the comic, even when taking turns that might be considered shocking to those of us with paleolithic world views.

GWS is a character-based gag strip, so the story-telling sometimes over-rides the funny, but this is rare, and generally, Corsetto displays an amazing ability to find humor in situations that would become months-long train wrecks in other strips.

The art is solid—stylized characters drawn in the hard-line fashion of a newspaper strip—but nothing that'll get put in the Louvre.  Then again, Bill Amend's Foxtrot and Stephan Pastis's Pearls Before Swine aren't exactly DaVinci, either.  The art carries the comic well, and Corsetto's graphic story-telling skills are developed enough that GWS never sinks to the level of "radio with pictures".

Over all, Girls With Slingshots is a good read, and well worth your time.  Be prepared to be a little embarrassed and maybe a little shocked.  Be prepared to be pleased.

Girls With Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto
Updates:  M-S
Caveats:  Strong Sexual Content, Marital Aids, Talking Cacti
Rating: