Her Hidden Mucus

A neurotic fashion blogger has an embarrassing problem in Snotgirl, a comic series written by Bryan Lee O'Malley and pencilled by Leslie Hung. I finished reading the first two volumes yesterday, altogether collecting issues one to ten, and found the series enjoyable though not quite as good as I hoped.

The concept has an almost Hitchcockian sexuality to it. This beautiful, carefully maintained woman who is ashamed of her secret bodily secretions--and it's all packaged in something the average, morally upright reader would be comfortable talking about; allergies. Quite appropriately, no sexual comparisons are drawn in the surface text of the comic, though the series has plenty of sex.

Focusing on fashion blogger Lottie Person, the series includes a small cast of self-obsessed, shallow Internet personalities. The second volume details their misadventures at a fan convention with broad comedy following a psychological murder mystery in the first volume. There's a deliberate ambiguity about how much is occurring only in Lottie's head in the first volume; she meets a beautiful fellow blogger named Caroline whom she nicknames "Cool Girl"--but when Cool Girl discovers Lottie's secret allergy problems, there's a strange sequence involving a murder that may or may not have occurred. Meanwhile, Lottie discovers her former intern, Charlene, has been stalking her.

I was expecting a revelation that Lottie is short for Charlotte and that the three similarly named women--Charlotte, Charlene, and Caroline--were all aspects of a single personality or something but the revelation never came. Maybe it will yet in a future volume. The comedy feels a bit like a josei manga with its jokes revolving around a ditzy, shallow protagonist--I was strongly reminded of Moyoco Anno's Happy Mania. The art also imitates a manga style but while Hung makes decently attractive cover art she lacks skill for communicative facial expressions and either the time or patience to draw proper backgrounds. But she does come up with some fun outfits for Lottie that support the concept of her as a fashion blogger with her own line of apparel.

The series is ongoing, I'm not sure if I'll pick up volume three when I see it, but I might.

Twitter Sonnet #1227

Assorted arms dispersed among the hands.
Elab'rate grids support the window panes.
An army's stitched with darkest velvet bands.
A body's strength is propped on bony canes.
Distinctions mount between unseen and gone.
Familiar time includes the mass's walk.
Committees joined to push the crucial pawn.
But movement mostly lapsed to looping talk.
A flash of blue and engines now depart.
A twilight tunnel takes the rider's face.
A careful tale the paper walls impart.
Discarded books regroup at glasses base.
Some visage peers beyond the swinging door.
A waiting patient sits within the core.

Someone is Julia

Sometimes, family and social coercion can pressure a woman to marry. Less often, she's kidnapped and forced to assume the identity of a dead woman as in 1945's My Name is Julia Ross. It's a fascinating and weird little gothic melodrama.

Julia (Nina Foch) is having trouble paying the rent while she looks for secretary work, a fact for which she takes some verbal abuse from the housemaid. So when the elderly Mrs. Hughes (Dame May Whitty) offers her a job as a live-in secretary, Julia doesn't even stop to consider how strange it is the woman wanted to make sure she had no friends or relations.

Before long, Julia's waking up in a lush mansion in Cornwall, everyone's calling her Marion, and everyone's acting like she's married to Mrs. Hughes' creepy son, Ralph (George Macready), who has an odd habit of clenching his jaw while involuntarily breaking nearby inanimate objects.

It doesn't take much to convince the servants or all the people of the nearby village that Julia really is Marion, despite her protests and pleadings. Fortunately, it turns out she does have a friend, a young man who's in love with her, back in London. She hadn't lied to Mrs. Hughes--at the time of her interview she thought Dennis (Roland Varno) had been married to another woman. But it turns out the other woman refused to go through with the ceremony when he kept accidentally calling her Julia. It seems not matching up Julia's name with her person is a pervasive problem.

There's certainly a fascinating theme about dislocated identity and it's fun watching Julia trying to concoct schemes for escape. I do kind of feel like there should have been at least one moment, though, where she thought, "Hey, with a mansion and servants, maybe I could get used to being called Marion." Provided Ralph doesn't inadvertently snap her neck. My Name is Julia Ross is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1226

For empty lamps a hand acquires glass.
A metal makes the bulb an easy find.
Between the drakes and horses swim the bass.
Brunettes and blondes are really two in kind.
Recurring sudden absence wreaths the walk.
Escape was never had but looping runs.
The quiet living yet may hear them talk.
The fog is thick about the sinking suns.
A noodle stretches straight across the day.
The timer fell behind the silent stove.
A bike for rooks and knights'll make a way.
The pieces gathered 'cross the checkered grove.
A double bass removed the cherry pain.
Guitars on squeaky wheels pervade the lane.