Previously, in Snotgirl, artist Leslie Hung and writer Bryan Lee O’Malley’s surreal California fashion world noir spiral, life was looking alright for perpetually allergy-beset fashion influencer Lottie Person. She’d hooked up with her crush/fascination/object-of-obsession, Caroline. Caroline, often cutting, sometimes astonishingly cruel, revealed a previously unseen warmth as her relationship with Lottie became romantic and sexual. They had time for each other, time that was theirs and theirs alone (minus the on-off appearances of Caroline’s little brother/fixer Virgil who, as far as Lottie knows, is Caroline’s little brother). But sharing your life with someone else is never simple. There are friends and family to navigate, boundaries to respect, boundaries to set, and the fact that you and your partner will have your share of clashes — even when your beloved isn’t a possibly immortal, eternally young enigma hiding something seriously shady with the help of her brothers/fixers — one of whom you do not know exists.
I dig the way colorist Rachel Cohen captures the look of Caroline’s ritzy apartment in low light—the faded paleness suggests a light on in another room. Simultaneously, it reflects Lottie’s dampened feelings as she collides with Caroline’s manipulative side.
Image Comics
Snotgirl #17 digs into how Virgil – or rather, a Virgil – navigates living with and working for Caroline. It’s stressful. Even if she did not have a mysterious, unsettling history, she’s capricious, happily mean, and prone to drastic leaps when the fancy strikes her (i.e., introducing herself to Lottie’s mother as her daughter’s girlfriend when Lottie hadn’t told her mother anything about them, let alone about being attracted to women). And she does have a mysterious, unsettling history — one that Virgil isn’t wholly privy to despite knowing some of, and for that matter being part of it, given his Solid Snake-style sneaking-suited antics. So, stressed out and increasingly fed up, he starts a journal and begins an investigation. If the journal he found from 1999 is to be believed, the 2010s are not the first time he’s tried to write himself down.
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If issue #16 — Snotgirl‘s first after a years-long hiatus — reintroduced the players and their stages with a new status quo, issue #17 complicates the new while reasserting some of the comic’s long-standing dynamics. Lottie’s looking for a way up as her life keeps shaking its snow globe. Caroline is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in (when she’s in the right headspace) impeccable fashion who knows how to hurt people. Lottie’s ex and Virgil’s crush, Sunny, knows something is off but only has hints as to what. Virgil’s balancing on a garrotte wire, but he’s wobbling and knows it.
As things stand, Snotgirl‘s center cannot hold. Hung and O’Malley’s storytelling uses this well. Hung’s framing and posing showcases the cast’s vulnerabilities and responses to increasing pressure, both physical and emotional—Lottie wobbles and contorts. Virgil retreats into himself. Sunny freezes up. Caroline remains Caroline. Their stressors are distinct — Lottie inadvertently tramples over a boundary Caroline never told her she had, while Virgil digs for answers about his family’s past that he knows will not lead anywhere good — but Snotgirl is starting to tighten the circle. See the page below, where Virgil and Lottie’s lives intersect.
Hung and O’Malley use the dissonance between Virgil and Lottie’s lives for humor—the absurdity of Virgil getting caught by his pajama-clad sister and her girlfriend sneaking in after a long night of spycraft—and drama—Virgil is being pushed to his limits, and Lottie knows very little about a significant part of Caroline’s life.
Image Comics
As a writer, O’Malley’s perhaps best known for his character work — a major part of what made Scott Pilgrim Takes Off so exciting was seeing how he and his collaborators poked at, played with, and built on the earlier work he’d done in his beloved comics. Snotgirl #17 is a welcome reminder that he’s damn good at suspense on scales ranging from panel-to-panel to series-wide. Lottie’s coming to understand that she’s unintentionally crossed a line with Caroline builds as Lottie finishes brushing her teeth, with the revelation hitting between panels as she spits out her toothpaste — doubling as an opportunity for Hung to do some excellent expression work. Virgil uncovers what could be a significant clue about whatever the heck his sister’s deal is. While the specifics of the clue are new, they tie back to the strangeness and surreality that have surrounded Caroline since issue #1.
O’Malley, Hung, and their team make Snotgirl hooky and intriguing. I need to see what happens next.
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