Lulu Eightball cartoon book review
Emily Flake’s new book of comic strips is the perfect blend of cynical topics and cute drawings
By Kei Hotoda
Published: September 29th, 2005 | 1:59pm
My one-and-a-half-hour commute from the Venus office to my apartment seemed to magically shorten while I read Emily Flake’s new book of cartoons, Lulu Eightball (Atomic Book Company). Loud, drunken White Sox fans boarded my train car, but I wasn’t irritated because I was preoccupied.
Her book is cute in form and function. It’s a small, squarish book whose cover is Band-Aid-pink with an illustration of a girl smoking a cigarette while holding the hand of a smiling monkey who appears to have a flask in his hand.
The topics and the manner in which they are covered are a bit vulgar — the characters worry about going to hell, getting fat, aging, pregnancy, and other responsible-adult issues — yet Flake manages to make many of these characters appealing and often in a “so-pathetic-it’s-cute” sort of way. Take, for example, the opening cartoon titled “Things to do with your fat other than poke at it morosely.” You can’t help but feel sympathy for the character, who comes up with six novel ways to deal with her fat. In fact, the stomach flab ends up taking on a character of its own — it’s so prominent and round, not blubbery and infused with cellulite, that you have to admit it’s cute.
I also like that Flake occasionally slips into the viewer’s subconscious by addressing things that everyone thinks of, if not finds funny, but the important thing is that she never goes overboard. You can often hear the characters’ voices, even their intonation, as you read their lines. You feel like you know people like these characters and would hang out with their real-life counterparts.
Lulu Eightball is actually a weekly comic strip that runs in several alternative newsweeklies, including one in Iceland and the Baltimore City Paper, and this book is a collection of many comic strips that have already been published. Because of this “weekly” format, some of the characters (including Flake herself) are recurring, but never consistently present, and there is no ongoing, continuous plot. Though such elements are not necessary for comic strips or cartoons, it would be interesting to see how Flake could fuse her humor and creativity to develop a story for certain characters. Maybe then I could say something along the lines of “I wasn’t irritated by the drunken White Sox fans because I was preoccupied with the adventures of Lazy Lulu and her magical whiskey-drinking monkey.” But smiling and laughing instead of scowling and being in a crappy mood on the train is one of the small yet precious things in life I highly value.
Issue #35
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