Comic World News

April 22, 2008:
CWN and the Grand Finale! -

February 4, 2008:
In Conclusion - David ends his CWN run with Tezuka's MW from Vertical

February 2, 2008:
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

February 2, 2008:
The Shoegazer Returns - A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge

January 30, 2008:
Tim's Reviews -

September 13, 2007:
Wizard World Chicago Loot, Part One - Stykman, Empty Chamber, the Ztarian Saga, and yes, Little Bunny Foo Foo

February 15, 2007:
I Come Not to Bury Nick Cage... - But to mourn the death of my punchline

November 20, 2006:
The End - Rich's last Chicks & Romance

November 8, 2006:
Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

October 4, 2006:
This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

September 18, 2006:
Back in Berlin - or How I spent my summer

July 29, 2006:
KICKING UP A STORM - An interview with David Lloyd

June 19, 2006:
You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Me. - Graeme looks at Spidey's "genies"

December 18, 2005:
Disappointed - Sad news for fans of Busiek's CONAN, Stephen King, and others

December 13, 2004:
JUSTICE UNPLUGGED 2 at last !!! - By Fabrice Sapolsky & Xavier Fournier

December 2, 2004:
THE TWELFTH AND FINAL STEP - Say it ain't so, Dan.

November 23, 2004:
The importance of editing -

September 29, 2004:
Mystery and Conundrum indeed! - Where in the world is Jason Pomerantz?

September 13, 2004:
Hello and Goodbye and Hello Again - Change is in the air at CWN and it smells sweet.

August 12, 2004:
The Rise of the Web Toon - New Business Model or Dumb Luck?

July 30, 2004:
The Name Says it All... - Spin Doctors revamp Boomerang.

July 27, 2004:
Bigger Isn't Always Better -

June 8, 2004:
Pre-emptive Strike: MoCCA Arts Festival - Looking forward to the con, rather than looking back at it

The Layer Method
Our top Secret time-saving technique for creating and merging balloons and tails in Illustrator.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Cry Yourself to Sleep

Sometimes things just have a way of working out

Written by Jeremy Tinder
Illustrated by Jeremy Tinder

Published by Top Shelf
$7.00

Some writers start a book without knowing exactly where it�s going to go. They just write until they get to the end and then they type that: The End. I don�t think Jeremy Tinder�s one of those guys. At least not with Cry Yourself to Sleep. The ending is too perfect.

The rest of the book is great as well. It�s the story of three friends: a wannabe writer, a bunny, and a robot. When each of them has a soul-crushing, dream-squishing day, they end up� well, crying themselves to sleep. Andy, the writer, gets a rejection letter on a manuscript and decides that he�s just not cut out to be a novelist. Jim the bunny is fired from the fast-food joint where he works because he refuses to wear the plastic gloves while preparing sandwiches (they are, after all, designed for humans). Adding to his problems, the rent is due and he spent his last paycheck on videogames. The Robot, on the other hand, just suddenly realizes that he�s become a heartless dick and wonders how it happened.

Cry Yourself to Sleep is about some heavy subject matter � the death of dreams and all that � but Tinder makes it a breezy read by foregoing navel-gazing in favor of lots of dialogue and even more humor. He punctuates the funny stuff with some poignant scenes of the three characters� sitting silently in self-pity, but most of the book is about them trying to deal with their situations.

They don�t start off so well. Andy gripes to friends about his novel and refuses to acknowledge that he�s written a thinly-veiled autobiography when his life�s really not that interesting. �No,� he insists, �He�s different from me. He works behind the counter of a copy place, not a video rental. He has lighter brown hair and a beard. Plus, he lives with a girlfriend, whereas I don�t. Totally different.�

Jim goes to his parents for money and ends up in an argument with his father (who�s human by the way, even though he lives in a rabbit hole with Jim�s rabbit mother). The Robot looks to the happy, carefree birds for guidance in how to be a better person, but quickly gets bored just following them around and sitting under their trees.

I haven't even mentioned the funniest stuff (including a kid with a fake moustache who tries to get into the adult section of Andy's video store), but Tinder keeps up the light approach throughout the book. By the end, the trio has found solutions to their problems in ways that made me smile. Actually, they don�t find the solutions so much as the solutions find them, creating a moral to the story that goes something like: �sometimes things just have a way of working out.� And it�s true too, which makes the story something that I'm going to go back and re-read when it doesn't look like things are going to work out.

In Cry Yourself to Sleep, things don�t always work out the way the characters expect them to, and they�re wonderfully surprising to the reader as well, but everything does manage to come together for a satisfying � and perfect � end. I did mention the perfect ending before, right?