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The Crack Magazine

Book of the Month: Ellerbisms (April 13)

Ellerbisms
Marc Ellerby, Great Beast Comics, £12.99. Marc Ellerby is a UK comic book artist who began putting ‘Ellerbisms’ online in 2007, comic strips that, each day, outlined a particular moment that occurred in his life during the previous 24 hours.

For this collection he’s ditched some of those strips in order to give more coherence to the story of his burgeoning relationship with Anna, a young Swedish woman he meets at the bookstore where they both worked. We follow them as their love blooms: they move in together, take trips to the cinema, to comic conventions, to Canada and Sweden; and we’re there with them for all the lows as well as the tender moments. Given the nature of the project (i.e. one strip a day highlighting one fleeting moment) there’s a dislocation to the narrative but that mirrors the way life really is: we remember our past through little incidents, not one overriding grand arc. And as a document of young love in the 21st century, this feels incredibly true and had me really rooting for the young protagonists. Funny, poignant and brave this is a real tour-de-force. 

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