Graphic Novel Review: I Want You by Lisa Hanawalt

Posted on March 11, 2021 at 9:32 am by Gene Ambaum

I Want You by Lisa Hanawalt. Drawn & Quarterly, 2020. 9781770463882. 140pp.

This is a collection of Hanawalt’s black and white minicomics from before she published Hot Dog Taste Test, or worked on Bojack Horseman and her own animated series, Tuca & Bertie (a new season is coming to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2021!). These are early comics, and in her introduction (with apologies) she compares looking back at old work to “taking a shit and not flushing it.”

The book is filled with well-dressed anthropomorphic animals; my favorite is the fashionable she-moose who appears again and again, who is first shown laying atop several crushed cars. The animals in strange hats are a close second. (Shout out to the cat with the birth control hat, and the depressed looking dog wit the fax machine on his head.) There are bits that are clearly comics, and others that are comics-ish, plus drawings that range from delightful to weird. And there’s some sex and more bathroom humor, too. Reading this was like getting a great birthday present.