Emi Lenox: EmiTown (Image, 1/11/11)
Emi Lenox’s EmiTown will win your heart with the power of whimsical doodles and cat armies. Needless to say, it is not your ordinary autobiographical comic, and Lenox is not your ordinary cartoonist. Many writers would be content to tell funny anecdotes, chronicle individual episodes in their lives, and tell linear stories, but Lenox has instead crafted a “sketch diary.” Each day, she draws a few doodles about how she’s feeling, fun or embarrassing things that happened to her, rent worries, grocery lists, and, yes, love — in an adorably off-kilter style. The diary is also a sort of testing ground for new drawing styles, metaphors, and alter egos, leading to an engrossing portrait of the artist-in-progress.
Lenox’s daily comics, which seem a bit thin as individual stories, instead build patterns, invite us into Emi’s life, and, taken together, present the strange world of “EmiTown,” where the optimistic white-heart and pessimistic black-heart Emi battle for control of her self-esteem, where coffee addiction becomes an increasingly manic state of mind, and where we get to know a funny, sensitive, and damn good cartoonist.
