Solutions and Other Problems

It's been seven years since Allie Brosh's incredible Hyperbole and a Half. Turns out she's been going through some things. A cancer scare revealing a fruit salad of tumors, the loss of her younger sister to suicide, a divorce and the subsequent struggling with loneliness. Hardly fodder for hilarity.

But this is warm and funny and somehow avoids maudlin sentiment. Drawing yourself as an ambulatory tadpole with anime eyes really manages to leaven the mood. But don't dismiss the drawings as completely juvenile, Brosh with a deft line manages to invoke cringey awareness, reckless glee and stunned confusion. Somehow her Vegas party-bros are spot on and she most certainly deserves the most prestigious of awards she has given herself for “fanciest horse drawing.”

We are all stupid, serious, mad little animals, and that is nowhere more on display than in these crazy cartoon caricatures where a dozen or so pages of this can just break my heart.



...seriously, you've been warned.