"Howell debuts with a collection of darkly poetic vignettes that use the aesthetic of Victorian-era children’s books to capture personal riffs on such contradictions as strength vs. vulnerability, visibility vs. privacy, and artistic creation vs. suffering. These play out through four doll-like young girls named Complications, Heartache, Rebellion, and Commitment. The fifth major character is a shrouded figure who represents death, self-doubt, isolation, and mental anguish. Howell’s elegant black-and-white drawings depict the girls grimly engaging in childish horseplay, driven by a narrative that pokes at romanticized views of insecurity, suffering, and visibility. One drawing represents the girls hanging around a tree, with caption boxes stating, “Self proclaimed broken people can paint beautiful pictures.... I don’t want to know pain just to find meanings.” Elsewhere, Howell insists that being strong takes its toll: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? I don’t want to be brave again and again.” Eventually, the girls engage the shrouded figure in a fight to the death, with the suggestion that they are destined to do this repeatedly. Art comics aficionados will find much to appreciate in Howell’s edgy, Gothic vision." - Publishers Weekly
"Like a cherished keepsake rebelling against the cruelties of an online auction, the wayward waifs of Howell’s porcelain landscape are forced to fight their way through splintered selfhood in a broken world. Vulnerable and scrappy, wistful and ferocious, Forget Me Not is a sharp pinch in a tender place" — Edie Fake, author of Gaylord Phoenix
"Forget Me Not captures the painful balance of nakedness, shame, dread, loneliness, and anger that drives those of us who make our living from the curiosity and hunger of the public." — Carta Monir, author of Secure Connect
"Honest, unsettling, made with a tremendous amount of skill (all the while remaining stunningly unique), this is a comic to contend with… …Themes of art, family, failure and fear all creep around the edges in a work that breathes thought and honed execution." — Austin English, author of Gulag Casual
"Soul-searing memoir, tasting of dark introspection. His hooks on the brush have quite a bite of the horror-tinged, and obsessive-yet-gestural constructions within sparse framing that stands out in the current comics scene." — Bad at Sports
"Amazingly beautiful. The drawings are fantastic… …It reminds me of a demented Precious Moments." — Gutter Boys
"This is a book that gets its hooks in you—and then pulls on them for days, weeks, maybe even years… …It’s both easy and impossible to relate to, both intimate and coolly detached…. …If you’re one of those readers who values experiences that challenge your perceptions of, quite literally, everything? This isn’t just a book for you — this is the book for you. I still can’t get it out of my head and have resigned myself to the fact that I probably never will." — Four Color Apocalypse
