Book-A-Day 2018 #268: My Boyfriend Is a Bear by Pamela Ribon and Cat Farris

No one's perfect, y'know? You're always going to have to deal with some things that aren't exactly what you'd want when you're in a relationship with someone. Sometimes it'll be a dealbreaker -- there's an entertaining double-page spread in this book headed "Douchebags I've Dated" with some examples -- but some things you might just decide you can live with.

Say that you're a young modern LA girl, with an unpleasant call-center job, taking abuse from people who didn't realize they'd signed up for recurring payments for some useless software. Say you have run through those aforementioned douchebags, and even more, without finding anyone nice. And say you meet someone loving and cuddly and tender and only somewhat clumsy and prone to breaking things, and that he clearly loves you.

Would it be a dealbreaker if he happens to be a five-hundred pound American Black Bear?

Well, it wasn't for Nora. And this is her story: My Boyfriend Is a Bear. You could probably read it as an allegory if you wanted to, but, really, it's a fun romance comic about one girl and one bear against the world.

This is, as you might imagine, not entirely serious. Nora's new boyfriend is just "the bear," and the most articulate thing he ever says is "grah." (Which can be more articulate than some people, granted.) My Boyfriend Is a Bear is not set in a world of sentient bears or uplifted mammals or anything exotic like that: it's our world, our LA, only this one bear is in love with this girl. And vice versa.

Boyfriend is sweet and fun and goofy, and is probably playing with more genre-romance cliches than I noticed. Writer Pamela Ribon keeps Nora quirky and fun without making her a total dingbat, and artist Cat Farris makes all of the pages just as cute as a button.

And, if your own relationships bear some odd resemblance to Nora and the bear, well, that's your own problem....