Unlikely

This is the kind of graphic novel that actually inspires. While not as beautiful to look at as a typical noir, horror, sex, or superhero GN this series (with AEIOU and CLUMSY) is like having a buddy spill his guts to you while drawing pictures on napkins at a bar. It's intimate and unflinching but not overdosed on self-anything. Not grim, not sensational. I can see that many GN enthusiasts would be bored or unimpressed with the simplicity of the art and the unmelodramatic narrative, but something tells me that Brown is not aiming to convert fans of GNs or to get revenge by virtue of dirty laundry. This is not a dirty diary with airbrushed pictures. This looks and feels more like a series of emotional microscope slides.

Unlikely is the second Jeffrey Brown book I have devoured (Clumsy being the first), or perhaps nibbled upon relentlessly is more apt. Like Clumsy, Unlikely is a collection of little episodes, slices of life. Brown has an unerring eye for the little inanities that make up real life... the tiny little moments that real relationships are made up of: when she looked at you from across the room the first time, when she went out to have a toke with your friends instead of staying to watch the end of the video with you, when she didn't pick up the phone because she was sleeping instead of showing up for your date... . There are no huge plot turns here, just the unrelenting incremental buildup and later crumbling of an unlikely love affair. Reading the dialogue (there is really no narrative) and body language drawn in his innocent scratchy childlike lines, we nod our heads in understanding. We have all been there. I love reading Jeffrey Brown. Try it.