Publisher's Weekly Review
Loneliness is a prison, a fog, and a wasteland in this dreamlike exploration of depression and solitude. In the aftermath of a sudden breakup, Selma finds herself alienated by everything from a laundromat's membership plan to her most intimate friends. Next door, however, lies a tantalizing oasis: a posh apartment left empty by a traveling neighbor. Selma sneaks in, and as days go by, she slips more and more deeply into a hallucinatory whirlwind of borrowed clothes, dreams of talking fish, and a growing fixation with the owner of a faltering pet store nearby and his romantic entanglements. But none of this belongs to her; the question is how she'll haul herself out of the hole she's dug. Franz (Earthling) applies a wonderful degree of surrealism to both the quotidian and extraordinary circumstances of Selma's life; her lunch dates with friends are as surreal as her dreams of life in the desert. Franz's smudgy, rounded style charms in depicting a night in with tofu dogs and reality TV, but when subtle facial expressions are needed, as in scenes where Selma lies alone in bed contemplating her circumstances, the lack of detail leaves a blank slate. Despite this, Selma's journey is an affecting one. Her trek to self-actualization is twisting and forlorn-but a road worth traveling. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
A woman sneaks into her neighbours empty flat in this graphic novel mixing lonely lunches, wild parties and hallucinations Shit is grubbily surreal in Franzs sharp graphic novel, which follows a young womans response to a breakup and mixes lonely lunches, wild parties and hallucinations. After losing her job and being dumped by her boyfriend, Selma is putting up a picture in her new flat when the drill slips, opening a yawning crack into her neighbours vacant apartment. It starts slowly a glass of water here, a washing-machine load there but before long Selma has moved in. Shit Is Real is set in a near future where holograms are replacing workers, but theres no glossy sheen. Instead, discomfort and mishaps fill the pencilled pages: noodles spill on a shirt, urine streaks across a roof terrace and machines chirp and fail. Franz mixes reality with panic-flecked imaginings. He finds as much strangeness in the hard lines and social expectations of the city as she does in Selmas cosmic nightmares, while her darting eyes evoke doubt, eagerness and shame with a wonderful economy. For all its darkness, theres real energy and ingenuity: this is a wise and funny journey through loneliness and confusion. - James Smart.
Library Journal Review
In a mildly futuristic world, Selma undergoes an awkward breakup with boyfriend Max, an experience that disconnects her from actively engaging in life and somehow forces her internal world of dreams to merge with her waking life. She's tacitly supportive of best pal Yumi, who is quite happy to overshare with her depressive friend all the glories and reveries of her blossoming relationship, which furthers Selma's alienation. Feeling a kinship with an oddly shunned fish at a local eatery, Selma imagines herself as a visitor in its aquarium as the other fish ignore it. She obsesses over a potential new love, a pet shop owner, but the connection is fraught with missed opportunities. She dreams of deserts and sometimes sex, but every exciting possibility ultimately deflates into bland nothingness. In the midst of her shifting realities, a chance finding of the key to her rich and glamourous neighbor's apartment gives Selma new direction as she explores other lives and options. VERDICT Franz's (Earthling) dream of a comic reveals a gently sad take on desire and depression that uses a loose, almost naïve pencil-line style to create an unsettling yet entirely empathic worldview worth experiencing. [Previewed in Jody Osicki's "Graphically Speaking," LJ 6/15/18.]-Douglas Rednour, Georgia State Univ. Libs., Atlanta © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
