It's possible that one reason I like this so much is that I originally saw it a bit at a time in serialized form: page by page, Van Sciver's ridiculously expressive drawings and sharp dialogue make you willing to be carried wherever it might be taking you, whereas reading it all at once makes it more apparent that there's not a whole lot of organization to it and it feels brief. But that doesn't mean it's not effective; by the last few pages, in which grown-up Noah loses his relationship while young Noah loses his terrible family house, I was completely involved and getting just as weepy as the first time I'd seen it.

There's a very obvious theme regarding the artist's struggle to connect with people who aren't as worried about money as he is, and to justify his pursuit of a non-lucrative art form after growing up in poverty. What's not spelled out, but is an equally good reason for putting the childhood story side-by-side with the present-day relationship story, is that if you grew up in a crowded and chaotic environment where everything was weird for reasons beyond your control, and then you find yourself allegedly grown up and independent, it's easy for the relatively nice and non-threatening adult world to make you feel defective if you haven't mastered it; I can relate to this. Even though the child and adult segments are clearly drawn by the same person, they look and feel like two entirely different worlds, with the adult one being more coherent but also somehow less real. The past is full of expressionistic visual effects; the present is entirely literal except for Noah himself who sometimes devolves into a mangy monster, and when we reach the final breaking point of the relationship, instead of emotions being manifested in any visible way there's total darkness. And the most "adult" line by one definition ("I hope it's sex!") is also the most pathetic.

I really like how Van Sciver depicts his Mormon upbringing; while it's clear that he considers the church generally bogus and a major part of what was wrong with his family, he doesn't really say anything judgmental but just tries to convey accurately what he observed. The same goes for the character of his father, a sometimes scary person with many problems, but very specifically and lovingly described.

This material possibly could've been made into a longer and/or less anecdotal book, but does it need to be? No, I think it's just about right. ( )

This graphic memoir is filled with intriguing moments, especially from Van Sciver's childhood, but he fails to jell those moments into a coherent satisfying work.

The book is divided into three parts: Van Sciver narrates from a framing sequence set in 2017, recounts his childhood starting in 1994, and randomly jumps to a disintegrating romantic relationship around the time of his 30th birthday in 2014.

His childhood reminded me of Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle as both were raised in near poverty by a free-spirited mother and father whose primary interests do not seem to include being parents to their numerous children. Van Sciver's father has bipolar disorder, is unemployed, and physically punishes the children. His wife spends much of her time reading, writing and drawing. Both are devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints living in a broken down house in New Jersey and reliant upon support from their congregation.

The childhood sections are filled with some fascinating tidbits about living in a large, creative family and practicing a religion that seems mysterious to those looking in from the outside. For instance, during a fossil hunt, the father explains dinosaurs with this Creationist theory: "These bones didn't come from animals of earth, son. When our lord created this planet for us he did so by fusing together pieces of other worlds." (God recycles!)

But the childhood vignettes are frustratingly short and vague and constantly interrupted by the rather tedious relationship storyline. I think I'm supposed to think that the childhood that fostered his artistic creativity also got him used to living at a level of poverty that dooms the relationship, but I found it hard to care as I did not feel vested in this relationship as we are mostly shown the end when both parties are being sort of awful to each other.

And while this does not in anyway influence my rating of the book, I was a bit distracted by the presence of Ethan Van Sciver. Until the first page of this book, I did not know or even speculate that Ethan and Noah are brothers despite their sharing a rather uncommon last name and my having previously read books by both. Ethan has a swirl of controversy about him due to his behavior on social media and being a champion of the Comicsgate crowd. In this book, he is referenced mainly as the creator of Cyberfrog, which seems a bit like introducing your brother Martin Shkreli as a guy who works at a pharmaceutical company and moving on. And that's fair, I suppose, but it still seems a bit disingenuous. ( )