It's So Magic
The latest book full of "Ernie Pook's Comeek" installments features fewer of the emotional storms of early adolescence thanMy Perfect Life(1992), arguably Barry's best collection. It's more about what impinges on late-1960s midteener Maybonne Mullen than what she initiates, and it's got much more of the stories Maybonne's irrepressible younger sister, Marlys, writes and draws as well as some by their brother, Freddie. The boy's arrival to live with his sisters at Grandma Mullen's (he'd been with an aunt since his mother's breakdown) is one of the momentous happenings these four-panel strips record. Others are the brief return of Uncle John, whom the sisters adore even though he's gay; the night Maybonne's friend Cindy loses her virginity to the "new boys from the Catholic school"; reading Cindy's letters from a former boyfriend, a high-school dropout now in the army in Vietnam; being called back to live with Mom again and getting there on the bus; and when Maybonne returns to her old school, finding her old friend Brenda has been telling wild stories about her. And they are all, thanks to Barry's mastery of her material, quite magical indeed.Ray Olson