Adulthood Is a Gift! by Sarah Andersen

So it looks like I discovered Sarah Andersen's comics in late 2021, and read all of her books within roughly a year: Adulthood Is a Myth, Fangs, Big Mushy Happy Lump, Herding Cats, Cryptid Club, and Oddball. That's always fun - discovering a new creator and reading all the way out to the walls - but, unless the person you suddenly love is Wodehouse or Simenon, there's only going to be so many books, and you'll find the end.

And then you're in the same place as all of the older fans - waiting for the next book.

Andersen had a new book this fall, the confusingly-titled Adulthood Is a Gift! It is not, as I first thought, a gift-book edition of Myth; it's not a repackaging of Myth at all. It's two-thirds a brand-new "Sarah's Scribbles" collection and one-third prose-and-comics retrospective of her career to date. It's somewhere between a tenth and fifteenth anniversary celebration - the first book was in 2016, her first cartoon published online was in 2011. But why should we have to wait for round numbers?

(Parenthetically, as a Marketing Guy, I would have argued against having a book with a title so similar to an existing book, especially with the "crossed-out" title style. My bet is that sales on this one will be slightly disappointing, just because at least some people will be confused and think they already have this. On the other hand, creators typically hate Marketing Guy, and I do understand why.)

The new stuff is prime mature Andersen: goofy gags, largely about cats and introversion and how your body parts start to betray you much, much earlier in your life than you expect. There's about a hundred of those, in her precise minimalist style - seeing her older work later in the book really emphasizes how clean and funny her line has gotten over the years. (Down to the little things: her people's eyes are usually just a little off - too big, absolutely, and also just a hair wall-eyed all the time.)

The older material is presented as "essays and images" - Andersen shows an old comic, and then writes about it. Sometimes it's about who she was at the time, and what she was trying to do; sometimes it's about how the outside world caused trouble, as when she was attacked and harassed systematically by a group of online neo-Nazis in 2017.

So this is maybe for Andersen's fans more than her other books - at least for people who don't mind reading about process and thinking about how art is made. She's got impressive chops, and is insightful at writing about how she got to where she is now, too. So, if you like funny cartoons about Millennials, or hope to someday make your own funny online cartoons, Adulthood Is a Gift! could give you enjoyment and/or pointers.