Buff Soul by Moa Romanova. Translator: Melissa Bowers. Fantagraphics, 2025. 9798875000683. 240pp.
A bookseller at Third Place Books told me about their obsession with this book and Romanova’s drawing style. It was such a passionate, slam-dunk of a booktalk that I bought a copy. And now I love Romanova’s style, too, particularly the way she draws people.
Buff Soul is an autobiographical graphic novel about Romanova’s time in the U.S. with her friends in the band ShitKid. (I knew I loved it when she hallucinates/dreams about characters from the Lord of the Rings movies being on her plane, after starting to watch the movie on her flight to the U.S.) The whole is a story of friendship, music, and drugs and alcohol, with a bit of sex thrown in. It’s full of what feel like bad decisions, though it’s not a book about dealing with the consequences of those as much as it’s a story of hanging in with people one cares about.
I loved it, and I plan to reread it after I read Romanova’s previous book, the Eisner-winning Goblin Girl.
