I think this book was created as a single work; I think it’s something that should be called a graphic novel rather than a collection of comics. That’s not a big deal – it’s purely taxonomy – but I’ll start there.

Debbie Tung is a British cartoonist and illustrator, working professionally for maybe a decade now. From what I’ve seen, her work is often personal in that it’s about her as a person, deeply informed by who she is and where she is in life, but she’s not an inherently autobiographical cartoonist. Or maybe that’s a false dichotomy, but she seems to come from a different place than the alt-comics confessional style – all her work is specific, but most of it is outward-facing, as if she’s sharing aspects of her self that she thinks a lot of the audience shares.

She’s had short work published in a lot of places, for a number of years, and I’ve seen two of her three previous books – Happily Ever After & Everything In Between , about her newlywed life, and Book Love , which is pretty self-explanatory. (The third one is Quiet Girl in a Noisy World, which was first – I gather it’s mostly about introversion and I think it might now read like a predecessor to this book.)

Her new book this year was Everything Is OK , about depression. I think it’s telling a story from a few years back, that Tung now has some distance and can make comics about the lowest point of her life. I do think it’s true, in everything important. (No book is true in everything, no matter how hard anyone tries. The world is never that clear, that knowable.)

It’s a positive book; it even starts with positivity, as it’s about to show us Tung sad and having trouble coping with everything in her life. It’s here to say that all of these things are transitory, that life is long and worth living, and that help is always available, that everyone is worthy of happiness. And it circles that message, again and again, as Tung tells how she fell into depression, came to be diagnosed, and then got the help she needed to get out the other side. Everything Is OK never dwells on the depression; it is entirely about the title message.

It does make me wonder what OK means. Is OK better than bad but not as good as good? Does it means that it’s acceptable? Is it the bare minimum, or something more substantial?

I don’t think Tung is saying “this is fine ” here – she’s much more positive than that. But it also intersects with a song lyric that’s been stuck in my head like a koan for the past year – “I’m fine but I’m not OK.” I’m glad Tung is OK. I want to believe with her that everything is. And maybe I’m being disingenuous – she means a less expansive “everything” than I’m backing into, here. Tung’s everything is your whole life, but not your whole world. Everything you can control and or influence, but not the things you can’t.

But I’m running off into philosophy and analogy. Tung is much more grounded than I am. Her story is about a person, going through a bad time. It’s her, in this case, but it could be anyone. That’s her point: we’ll all have lows, we’ll all have bad times. And we all need to know that Everything will be OK, even at those worst moments. This is a book that does that, with clarity and honestly and an underlying sweetness. If you tend to overthink things, or get depressed, or feel overwhelmed, it just might be the message you need.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Some comic strips are vastly more likely to be posted in specific places than others. Even decades later, Far Sides cling proudly to doors in various STEM-related departments in universities throughout the nation. Dilbert – probably mostly older ones, if we’re honest – lives on fabric-covered cube walls, most often in a position where the worker can see it and passing supervisors can not.

And Unshelved is going to be posted in the sorting rooms and other “backstage” spaces of a library – I’m pretty sure of it. The strip itself ended a few years back after running for roughly the first fifteen years of this century, but that’s no impediment: I expect a lot of them were printed out and taped up in the early days, and are still making new appearances, here and there.

I am not a librarian, and my days of regularly dealing with the wild consumer were decades ago. (I was a cashier, and then a supervisor of cashiers, for a Bradlees store starting my senior year of high school. I’m never going back, but I’m glad I had that experience, and it made me think everyone should work a year or two in retail or foodservice, at least once in their lives.) But I like librarians, and I think I have enough library-adjacent experience (library patron, editor, book blogger, book-award judge, retail drone) to comment meaningfully.

And, hey, it’s a comic strip that’s pretty funny. That was an inducement, too. (I did read the first collection some years ago – this is probably the second, or maybe third, but it doesn’t make that clear anywhere.)

So I got Library Mascot Death Match , a random Unshelved book that’s the only one available in my library system. (Proof once again that librarians are the opposite of self-indulgent.) It was published in 2005, so it depicts a library that is somewhat technologically out of date – more so, I mean, even than a library today would be, since local taxpayers are not well-known for showering money on libraries to continually upgrade to the shiniest of new tech. But I think the people and concerns and issues are probably still pretty similar, though I wonder if streaming has blown a hole in libraries’ role in loaning out various video formats.

The main character is a young slacker named Dewey; given the time-frame, I suspect he was originally meant to be part of my generation, but he may read as a Millennial these days. (there’s always a new “those slacker kids,” and there always will be). As with any workplace comedy, there is a fair-sized cast around him, and my one complaint about this book is that they are not introduced well – a comic with a big cast needs a page (web or text) to say who the people are and what their deal is.

Dewey and his co-workers deal with the public, argue about their coffee orders and other workplace food issues, and spat with teachers about whose job it is to keep kids occupied at different times of year. There’s also a long comics-page-format story in the middle, in which a massively overfunded bookmobile (I think it’s supposed to be a metaphor for Amazon, but it comes across as “some other level of government has a lot more funding than we do,” which is weird) has to be defeated to save their local library.

It’s all a little bit quaint (2005, remember) and a little bit specific (library) but more than a little bit funny. You do not need to be a librarian to find Unshelved funny; I will attest to that. And it’s still being re-run online , so you can read it in the wild, as it was meant to be read, without finding this book or spending any money whatsoever.

And that’s very appropriate for a strip about a library, isn’t it?

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.