Wendy
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The outrageously funny and painfully relatable satire of an aspiring artist and millennial culture
Walter Scott’s Wendy comics have become a critical sensation, with rave reviews in The New Yorker and The Guardian, and an appearance in the Best American Comics anthology. Learn Wendy’s origin story as Scott hilariously plumbs millennial culture, creative ennui, and the nepotism of the art world’s institutions.
Wendy’s an aspiring artist in a party city, and she’s in a rut. She spends her time snorting mdma in gallery bathrooms and watching Nurse Jackie reruns on her laptop while hungover. So when she’s accepted into the prestigious Flojo Island residency, Wendy vows to buckle down and get working. But during the remote, woodsy residency, Wendy and her collaborator/bff Winona put on a performance piece that becomes the centre of an art world controversy, and so Wendy returns to Montreal, getting a job in a coffee shop to make ends meet.
With Wendy, Scott launches the Wendyverse, brimming with painfully relatable characters like the back-stabbing frenemy Tina, the name-dropping Paloma, the cool drummer Wendy obsesses over, Jeff, and of course, our treasured Wendy, the hot mess we can’t live without. In blunt, laugh out loud funny vignettes with perfect punchlines, Scott illuminates the opacity of artspeak and the ceaseless anxieties plaguing a largely privileged generation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wendy, a Montreal art-scene girl, keeps her fingers crossed while she applies for a coveted art residency on Flojo Island, in this debut collection. The rest of the time, she haplessly pursues the no-good musician Jeff, keeps up a love/hate friendship with her pal Tina, and makes bitter small talk with Vienna, who is having actual success in the art world. Wendy finds herself continually mired in a cycle of self-loathing, jealousy, and excessive drinking and partying. Even after she makes it to the promised land of Flojo, she struggles to express herself; she has genuine talent but must find a way past her self-doubt and competitive peers. Dark and hilarious, this comic looks hard at being young and the resultant anxieties about life choices, something Scott captures throughout with his minimalist cartoony illustrations. Despite how flippant and silly the drawings can seem (one of Wendy's friends, Screamo, has a face that is a wailing skull), this is a comic with real depth. Wendy's features become distorted and turn into a kind of ridiculous, soulless mask when she falls into jealousy or suffers some embarrassment. It's not a pretty picture, but some readers are sure to see themselves mirrored here.
