The Strange Ones
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
Publisher Description
Filled with visceral and engaging prose, this graphic novella offers a nostalgic look at two young misfits who manage to find belonging and heartbreak in each other’s friendship.
Anjeline walks with an open heart, but alone, through a world that consistently rejects her; Franck, another loner, never smiles. After the hand of fate literally shoves them together in the roiling mosh pit at a Midtown rock concert, they bond over the long commute back to Staten Island, and begin a friendship that makes the world a little better for them both. Together, this strange pair turns the sharp-edged, gloomy New York City into their playground...even as pain and heartbreak await around the corner.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This arch coming-of-age graphic novel, originally serialized in zines in the 1990s and completed in the 2010s, unfolds predictably unevenly with flashes of poetry. Gen X hipsters Anjeline and Franck meet at a Belly concert and keep crossing paths until they become friends, despite Franck's scowling pose of disinterest. They swap sardonic in-jokes and explore New York City together, hitting the Cloisters, the Staten Island Ferry, a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and hole-in-the-wall diners. In this gentle, nostalgic vision of the 1990s alternative scene, "strangeness" doesn't get much more extreme than wearing Army surplus and silly-walking like a Monty Python routine; Julie Doucet would eat these kids alive. The early chapters meander, but gradually the protagonists expose vulnerabilities and face the question of what kind of adults they want to become. Like the story, the art gets better as it matures, shuffling from scratchy alternative-zine hatching to strong, sure inks. Jusay wears his artistic influences, especially clean-line indie cartoonists such as Jaime Hernandez and Dan Clowes, on his sleeve. A comic produced over a 25-year period can't help but show growing pains, but it's hard not to share at least some of the artist's love for the characters and the very particular time and place they inhabit.
