Panel: "Sweet" 16

Published by Ferret Press
600 Markview Road
Columbus, Ohio
43214, USA
www.ferretpress.com

I reviewed one of these anthology comics last year, and while I found the stories of varying quality, there were a couple that I enjoyed.

While that issue was about superstition and bad luck, this one is about a substantially different subject: romance and relationships. This is an area that I am less interested in. Or rather, the ways in which it is presented here didn't appeal to me.

Several of the pieces were about marriage and children, concepts I generally find boring and dull, while another shows a relationship that seems to be based mostly on material wealth (it's supposed to be comedic, but instead succeeds in making me sad). I also took issue with one of the comics that said that the alternatives to "monogamy over a 70-year lifespan" are "really awful". This person might want to look into monogamish relationships.

The best story in here was by KT Swartz and Brent Bowman (who illustrated the comic I liked in the other issue I reviewed). It's more about the titular sweet sixteen (a concept that both mystifies and terrifies me) than relationships, and is kind of Hunger Games-y. I don't think it really works as a complete story by itself, and functions more as a Future Shock type story, but I found it more interesting than the other content in here.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)