Perfect Example

by John Porcellino

Overview

A melancholic memoir of saying goodbye to the familiar Brimming with empathy and a charming, self-aware wit, Perfect Example is King-Cat zinester John Porcellino’s coming-of-age memoir about the momentous and eternal year between the end of high school and the start of college. It’s a year of awkward house parties, first kisses, spontaneous, open-ended road trips, and struggles with depression. Framed within the context of empathetic recollection, Perfect Example offers up a new way for us to read our own pasts and be kinder to our younger selves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770462502
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	11/12/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	130
File size:	30 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

An Utne Independent Press and Firecracker Award nominee, John Porcellino has self-published his comic-zine King Cat for more than fifteen years, an excerpt of which is included in McSweeney's Issue 13, edited by Chris Ware.

Editorial Reviews

Growing up ain't easy-at times it can get downright depressing. One has to come to this graphic novel with a certain amount of approving open-mindedness-the drawing is appealingly innocent and after all, he does have the good sense to name the thing after one of the better songs by Minnesota band and '80s alt-music touchstone Husker Du. It's easy then to overlook some of the less endearing points, but this feeling of generosity doesn't last terribly long. Porcellino's story is based on his own mid-'80s adolescence in the Chicago suburb Hoffman Estates, and it's not one that he's overly concerned with making plot-friendly. His John is a moody teenager who spends most of his days listening to the underground bands of the time and trying to determine just what is making him so depressed. There are stabs at relationships, which tend to travel a pretty rocky road, and occasional attempts to escape the placid tedium of his surroundings. One especially memorable moment takes place during a nighttime jaunt to Lake Michigan, which results in John experiencing an explosively cathartic and borderline spiritual epiphany. For the most part, though, the comic bumbles along through minor mishaps and mini-events, befitting the cheerfully slapdash and childlike drawing-which, appropriately enough, looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a 50-cent Xeroxed comic found in the back of record stores. Where Porcellino's efforts fail is not in his attempt to replicate the small events of a mostly uneventful time or the triggers that would send him into dark depression, but in his inability to render his adolescence as anything but average. This problem is exacerbated in an afterword/biography that makes theauthor's viewpoint seem less introspective than self-indulgent. Small lives portrayed with a certain elegance, but nevertheless hampered by small vision.

Kirkus Reviews

John Porcellino creates some of the most thoughtful, intelligent, sympathetic and, yes, beautiful comix in America.”—Time.com

“John Porcellino's comics distill, in just a few lines and words, the feeling of simply being alive.”—Chris Ware

“What I immediately liked about Perfect Example was the spareness of the way it was drawn. After reading it, I was pleased to find out there's much more to it than beautiful artwork. It's sublime and profound and one of my favorite graphic novels.”—Chester Brown

"The spare and elegant artwork (and John’s puffy forelock) really recalled Charlie Brown for me, and the author echoes Schulz’s visual simplicity as he clears the stage for a deep plunge into existentialism and a critical look at life in the suburbs."—Youth Services Book Review

"[John Porcellino's] work illuminates the greatness of all humanity, for in his own existence, he finds beauty in his surroundings, in nature, his pets, in encounters with strangers."–New City


"Porcellino immortalizes the places that most people would drive by without a second glance... It's the kind of drawing that makes you want to go outside and pay attention to the world."–The Chicago Reader


"Porcellino... is a master of the form. His genius comes from the deceptively unpretentious nature of his work. The black and white drawings, the irregular squares of his panels, and his deep, often painful subject matter all coalesce to display singular comics craftsmanship of the highest order."–Comics Beat


"What began as an experiment in tune with the punk aesthetic of the time has evolved, over all these years, into a vision and body of work that continues to push the boundaries of artistic expression."
–Broken Frontier

From the Publisher