Like many folks around my age, Chasing Amy is a movie that occupies a special place in my heart. Not every element of the film has aged perfectly well (very few comedies of the era have), but there’s still so much to love about Kevin Smith’s tale of a man and a woman realizing that there’s more to their friendship than they realized. In a time before we had a broader vocabulary to describe human sexuality and its fluidity, Chasing Amy still manages to tell a humanistic story of love and attraction as an ever-evolving spectrum, rather than an immutable fact.
In a decade riddled with stories about Gen X man-babies stuck in arrested development (some of the best of which were written by Smith himself), Chasing Amy instead tackles both the toxicity and fragility of masculinity in the ’90s. It’s a story about Holden McNeil, a guy who can’t stop getting in his own way, and the woman who eventually realizes he can’t always try to complete herself through other people. It all culminates in a bittersweet full-circle moment for both characters, as Holden finally finishes the personal comic book he’d been struggling to write — and in doing so, finds a way to apologize to Joey Lauren Adams’ Alyssa (the metaphorical “Amy” of the film’s title).
When I found out that the comic glimpsed at the end of the film was finally becoming a reality, my interest was piqued. That’s why I’m sad to report that, even when viewed through a lens of nostalgia, this comic book simply doesn’t work for me.
The latest installment of Smith’s Quick Stops anthology series plays like a CliffsNotes version of the film, eschewing much of the flick’s nuance and even narrative coherence to deliver a series of brief out-of-context moments from Chasing Amy. Whole scenes have been reduced to a single page (or even a single panel), which in turn makes the book nigh-incomprehensible, particularly if the movie isn’t fresh in your memory. Some sequences read like total non sequiturs, with one example being a panel in which Jason Lee’s Banky’s yells at Ben Affleck’s Holden, “Because the other three are figments of your f***ing imagination!” In the film, this is the button to Banky’s elaborate argument against Alyssa. In the comic, it’s an answer to nothing. There’s no real setup; the line appears in a vacuum, and therefore does not carry any meaning unless the reader is able to conjure the rest of the scene to fill in the gaps between panels.
The whole book reads like this, and it’s a puzzling tactic, especially due to its metafictional function. If this is supposed to be the award-winning book that Holden wrote to tell his story, then wouldn’t he need to… actually tell the story? What would someone get out of this book, other than the idea that Holden forgot to write and draw several pages?
Dark Horse
On a positive note, John Sprengelmeyer does a lovely job throughout, with the pencils, inks, and letters feeling like a perfect approximation of the ’90s indie comics scene. He matches the visuals of the film, delivering some fun nods to not only the larger Askewniverse, but also to Smith’s directorial choices and camera angles. Character acting throughout is convincing and vulnerable, and the celeb likenesses are impeccable, all while allowing Sprengelmeyer’s personal aesthetic to shine through. I quite enjoyed a panel early in the issue wherein Sprengelmeyer renders Holden as a pencil sketch, reflecting the character’s artistic talents. One particularly lovely moment arrives when Holden delivers his impassioned monologue declaring his love for Alyssa, which makes fantastic use of the darkness and the rain outside of Holden’s car to show how vulnerable and isolated he feels in that moment.
It’s also worth noting that Smith’s narration for Holden feels quite natural and even poetic in many places, giving us a bit more insight into the character’s feelings and motivations during some of the story’s more intense moments. Holden reacts like a raw and exposed nerve throughout much of the movie, so it’s great as a fan of the film to know that there was more to his uglier actions than pure frustration or anger. The introspection adds some nice shading to Chasing Amy.
Maybe I’m putting too much thought into this, and perhaps this book is meant as more of a fun look back and a heartfelt supplement to a movie that has gone through multiple cycles of reappraisal over the years. There are some really beautiful moments sprinkled in here, like the one I mentioned above. However, I can’t help but feel like this issue was a letdown. In many ways, Chasing Amy still feels like one of Smith’s most personal and humanistic works. I just wish Holden’s comic felt more like that, and I wish Smith had maybe taken this opportunity to reflect on the original story. I’d be curious to see these characters again through a more modern lens (something briefly glimpsed in 2019’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot).
It’s hard to rate this book on its own terms, since it’s tied so closely to the film that inspired it that it almost becomes an artifact from a world that doesn’t exist. It’s an oddity, to be sure. That being said, I am looking forward to the future issues in this series. Even though this issue didn’t work for me, I still have a lot of love for the worlds and characters Smith creates. He was one of my favorite guests during my time on the AIPT Comics Podcast, and I truly believe that his work is a reflection of a person who feels everything quite deeply and wears their heart on their jersey’d sleeve. For that reason, I’m hopeful that the rest of the series may speak to me a bit more, as Smith aims to tell some more original stories and give loving send-offs to some of his collaborators who have passed on. Amy got away, but I think there’s still plenty of reasons to be excited for Quick Stops.
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